So it splintered into anti-Democrats, Free Soilers and Know-Nothings.
Only after the Whigs collapsed did the Republican Party become a national force.
The GOP did not begin as an organized, coherent faction of the Whigs who took the Whig Party over and then transformed it from within.
Nor did the GOP begin as a breakaway faction from the Whigs that contested elections as a third party against the Democrats and Whigs.
The GOP was a response to the chaos that ensued when America had only one organized national party left - the pro-slavery Democrats.
The GOP was a response to a power vacuum.
Right, that is what I am saying here, the GOP is dying and soon we will have the Party of Government left.
The Opposition to expanded Government power won't have a party because the GOP will have gone the way of the Whigs, so those Republicans who genuinely are against all of this and us Independents, Tea Pariters and Libertarians will form a new one.
Like the Original GOP or UKIP.