In the 1850's the Whig Party was split on what it stood for - in that case slavery. In 1841 Whig President William Henry Harrison died and VP John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency. Tyler was a Virginian and states' rights absolutist. [While slavery is not an issue now, states' rights probably is!]
If one reads the Wikipedia article about the Whigs, some parallels do seem to emerge.
VIZ:
In 1848, the Whigs, seeing no hope of success ... adopted only a very vague platform.
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After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The northeastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market but cared little about slavery one way or another.
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No one found a compromise that would keep the party united.
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In the mid-1850s, few looked to the quickly disintegrating Whig party for answers. In the north most ex-Whigs joined the new Republican party, and in the South, they flocked to a new short-lived "American" party.
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The election of 1852 marked the beginning of the end for the Whigs. ... Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming, "We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!" Increasingly, politicians realized that the party was a loser.
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In 1854 ... Other Whigs joined the Know-Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants.
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After 1856 ... some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the 'Opposition Party' for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes.
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... during the Reconstruction Era, many former Whigs tried to regroup in the South, calling themselves 'Conservatives' and hoping to reconnect with the ex-Whigs in the North. These were merged into the Democratic Party in the South, but they continued to promote modernization policies such as large-scale railroad construction and the founding of public schools.
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In today's discourse in American politics, the Whig Party is often cited as an example of a political party that lost its followers and its reason for being, as by the expression "going the way of the Whigs." However, the Whig program for 'internal improvements' or infrastructure spending is now enshrined as an important role of government by nearly all political leaders, especially during economic downturns.
Leni