The Tea Party
In 1824 I believe there was a hotly contested presidential election in which no candidate held the necessary majority number of electoral votes. The election was thrown to the state delegations in the House and JQ Adams came out the victor much to the extreme ire of one Andrew Jackson. There is a lot more in regard to what happened and why but I will leave that to the reader to further pursue. Suffice to say that there was a bit of bad blood and the contest for 1828 began immediately.
Do you remember what happened in the year 2000?
1824 and 2000: one of these was known as the “corrupt bargain” and the other has indefensibly been characterized as a great theft. The loser in one went off in a huff of steam and became even more so known for his hot and fiery temper; the loser in the other went off on a big jet plane that spewed all kinds of noxious carbon stuff and became known for causing global warming. And by “causing” here I mean to say it became his cause. Of course, what else could I possibly mean? But I digress.
In 1824 there was essentially only one political party so there appears to have been a good bit of self-loathing afoot in those olden days of Old Hickory. (Who else could you hate? Bush wasn’t born yet.) And, by the way, Old Hick came back to win in 1828 and to his extreme glee and with eternal edification he beat JQ in the process. Retribution. Didn’t happen in 2004 though. To be true to history I guess that Gore should have run again in 2004. Maybe he was off in one of his mansions or in one of his many transport vehicles and counting all that hot cash. Dunno, but Kerry lost.
After Jackson was elected the first time, as I understand things there was a split in the party that led to Jacksonian Dems (forerunners of today’s top jockeys) and the Whigs (can you name three Whigs?).
Perhaps delayed by one term due to a) public trust in Bush as a strong leader in times of grave international concern or b) lack of a good enough set of Dem candidates or a good enough campaign to win, the Dems did come back to win in 2008. I’ll leave aside any House and Senate parallels for now.
If you could read an honest 2-3 paragraphs description of the characteristics of the men and their administrations you might be struck by the similarities between Jackson and Obama. Just sayin…research a bit for yourself ok?
So the modern day Dems and the Whigs were formed during the reign of AJ- got it so far? The Whigs went on to later win two elections I believe but then splintered, foundered and died as slavery returned as a justifiably critical and top issue (indeed in the history of the country) in the 1950s. The Repubs were formed primarily as an anti-slavery party.
The Repubs lost in 1856 but gained the White House in 1860 when a man from the great state of Illinois (great no more- I can say that because I have to live here for the time being) though not the front runner in the early days wound up as the Repub candidate. Since the Dems had split once or even twice, depending on how you prefer to account for things, it seems that good old Abe managed to back in to the presidency. Lucky for him. Lucky for us though as he is nowadays considered by those in the know as one of the best prez’s ever, mentioned even in the same convenient breath as JFK, FDR, WJC and even BO himself. Not bad for a poor white boy from the sticks.
But I digress. Let’s review.
Fed & Anti-Fed…Antis disappear and Dem-Reps arise. Feds then disappear and there is true love across the aisle- heck, there is no aisle for a while and everyone is happy expect for JQA, AJ, and the Clay man. But I digress. Then the Dem-Reps split into the pure Dems and the Whigs. Whigs later fold and morph into the Repubs. Dems splinter enough over slavery to lose in 1860 and are so mad about it they grab their balls and run on back home to fight a war on the inside. They later lose that war and go on to segregate, demonize, belittle, demean, ostracize, and hang the blacks that were supposedly freed under that lucky boy from Illinois. But I digress. Dems get real progressive later on and then strike up a new deal and work to establish a great society. Turns out that the deal didn’t leave everyone with a good hand and the society is only great if you like to take money from the man. But I digress. Third parties (I used to be up for three or even four parties on some nights when I was much younger) formed, reformed, sputtered and died over the years to no great avail from what I can see. Parties like the Constitution Party and the Libertarians gain press but not much prestige these days- still they have very valid points to make in my humbled opinion.
So in 2008 and again in 2012 the Dems won and the Repubs lost. The Libs were considered merely in passing as I can see. Constitution Party- uh, who knows. But rearing up in response to the 2008 election came a new set of folks who did not at first want to classify themselves necessarily as a party but became one nonetheless. They seemed to know what they wanted but not what to call themselves. D & R were taken as were L & C so they ran through the alphabet. They were biased against vowels and first voted for S but someone said they might become known as Sparty which did not sound too official or dignified so on a second vote they settled on T. Later on a reporter (from MSNBC I believe) recast them as the T(ea) Party and the rest is history.
They exist and it is strange what reactions there have been to them. The R Party, which should in principle agree with most of what T espouses and therefore welcome them, actually seems to despise them and just want them to go away so they can get back to the good old days. The D party, which should despise them, seems to love them as an object of their vilification- I don’t think the Dees would ever want the Teas to go away else who would they paint as the nasty old racist white folk out to return the country to Jim Crow and worse? It’s truly amazing to my simple mind. But not really surprising.
It ain’t what’s behind the title and it ain’t what’s behind the R or D. It ain’t what’s behind the door or even what gets discussed in closed quarters. It ain’t what you tell me and it ain’t what I hear you say on the evening news. It ain’t none of that. It’s what you is that is all of that. And I for one am bone tired of what you ain’t and what you pretend to be.
Many say you need to win elections to change things. What gets changed? please tell me. I hear ya but no longer think that’s enough to save this place. The Whigs certainly didn’t think so and that journey, coupled with such a significant and long-standing issue as slavery gave us a war yes but it also gave official freedom for a whole lot of people and it gave us AL. That’s meant as Lincoln and not Gore- please! Granted that real freedom was still a long way off (thanks to the love-everyone Dems) but it arrived nonetheless and although there are those who still conveniently use race for an advantage they do so disingenuously. If you truly think I hate you because you are black then I am figuring that you hate me because I am not. Fair enough? But I do indeed digress.
Final stretch. I think if the D’s are to be defeated it will have to be due to a real significant reason; an issue as large as that in the 1850’s. What could it be? Ok, here is an idea.
Let’s get the R’s & L’s & C’s and then also as many I’s and old school or disenfranchised D’s as we can to come together and build a platform based solely and firmly on the Constitution of these United States as originally intended by the men who made it happen and not intended by those who would later attempt to make it as they so happened to think it should be. That should be simple enough.
The slogan: “I am a supporter of the Constitution of the United States and if you would like to know what that means I would be happy to read it for you.”
Nuff said.