“At lunch the other day I was startled to hear a specialist in Republican Party affairs give it as his judgment that not inconceivably the Republican Party would die in about three years. ‘Here’s what would do it,’ he explained to his two guests. ‘First, a tremendous defeat in the congressional elections in the fall. Next, in the coming presidential cycle, a catastrophic defeat at every level — presidential, congressional, and local.’ After that, he said, in the ruins of the following year, the commanding position of the organizing party would be lost, and ambitious conservatives would look for another label. It would be not unlike the end of the Whig Party in the mid-1850s.”

– William F. Buckley, Jan. 26, 1974