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In rough effect, the political party must win the approval of a consensus that includes not only the party loyalist but the estimated 40% of the electorate in the political spectrum's middle span, people whose vote, regardless of nominal party affiliation or inclination, is changeable. This consensus shuns rigidly doctrinaire extremes that have brought upon the system its most tragic failures, notably the Civil War. British Political Scientist Denis Brogan points out that "the immediate cause of the greatest breakdown of the American political system was the breakdown of the party system, the failure of the party machinery and the party leaders to remember their national function, which, if carried out, was the justification of the varied weaknesses and absurdities of the party organizations and policies. Not until the party system broke down, in the dissolution of the Whigs, in the schism of the Democrats, was war possible." Similarly, it has been when one or another party isolated itself from the consensus—whether by reason of the cross-of-gold dogma of William Jennings Bryan in 1896 or the simplistic moralisms of Barry Goldwater in 1964—that the party system has been thrown into great inbalance.
Thus party stands must be stated in generalities, and party differences must be perceived as tendencies. Both parties, for example, will invariably favor compassion in public welfare combined with stern fiscal responsibility, but as Rossiter puts it, "Look deep into the heart of a Democrat and you will find plans to build 400,000 units of public housing and to ship 300 tractors to Ghana (whether Ghana wants them or not); look deep into the soul of a Republican and you will find hopes for a reduction in taxes and for a balanced budget."
Given the two parties' community of aims, Democrats place more reliance on federal solutions, while Republicans stress individual opportunity. Democrats tend to favor the managed economy, while Republicans espouse more of a market economy; Democrats are likely to believe that spending and deficits create prosperity; while Republicans still worship at the shrine of the sound dollar. None of these are absolutes; in the attempt to win the consensus, parties gladly let their values overlap and intertwine.
The Comeback Trail
Within these broad bounds, a Republican comeback begins to seem plausible. By and large, the national Republican Party still holds to Lincoln's thesis: "In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere." Today, as in Lincoln's time publican emphasis is based on a faith in the individual's right to go as far and as high as he can within the limits ot his own abilities; the Republican credo includes a certain freedom from government interference in that effort. Yet modern Republicanism also recognizes, as Lincoln did, that the individual cannot do everything for himself, that in certain areas, government—first local, then state, and finally federal—has a requisite role.