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I like Edmund Burke too, particularly for his support of Catholic emancipation when that was a pretty risky stance (although I also think he's _somewhat_ overrated, particularly by Americans), but I don't agree that he is in any meaningful way "the founder of modern party government" as Mr. Kristol asserts. Factional leader of the more conservative Whigs (versus the radical Whigs who followed Charles James Fox), certainly. But for anything like an ultimately long term stable party, with branding, some level of party discipline, corporate identity ("follow the money") I think credit really belongs to Pitt the Younger (if you just mean a long term coordinated cabal keeping in office with a somewhat rotating cast, Walpole deserves such credit as might be deserved).

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