On this episode of Now & Then, “Split Party Politics,” Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman discuss cycles of in-fighting, tension and collapse in American political parties. They begin with the Federalists and their ill-fated Hartford Convention, explain the reconstitution of both the Democrats and Republicans during the early 1880s, and talk through the current political battles and demographic shifts affecting the Republican Party. Why do political parties collapse? How does partisan dysfunction change the legislative process? And can the past show us how the current splits in the GOP will end?

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