In my first post about politics, I spoke of the history of political parties and questioned their importance today. You heard me talk about the classic battle of Democrats versus Republicans, and what the casualties that war has left in our country. But this war is not just a one-on-one challenge, there are challengers on all fronts. Who are they? Why don’t we ever hear about them? In this post I plan to talk about the smaller known political parties and how they attempt to compete with both the Democrats and Republicans.

Originally, the two main parties in American government were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, otherwise known as the Republicans. These two parties started during the first ever presidential election, in 1789. The Federalists earned their name as they were a group of people, mainly wealthy aristocrats, who strongly supported Alexander Hamilton and his ideas, outlined in The Federalist Papers. The Federalists unofficially backed John Adams as their candidate in the presidential election.

The Republicans were able to better associate themselves with the common people of America, and made strong attempts to serve the average citizen as much as possible. The main supporter of the Republicans was Thomas Jefferson, making the election of 1789 a battle between Adams and Jefferson. It was an extremely intense election that ended with Adams just narrowly winning the election over Jefferson.

A political cartoon depicting the Federalists vs. Republicans in Congress

This war raged on for several decades, until around the 1820s in a time known as the Era of Good Feelings, when President James Monroe made strong efforts to end bipartisanship and unite the country as a whole. It brought about the end of the Federalists and Republicans as we know them. This era is actually quite ironic as James Monroe suffered heavily with bipartisanship within his own cabinet, which you can read about more here:

https://www.boundless.com/u-s-history/textbooks/boundless-u-s-history-textbook/democracy-in-america-1815-1840-12/the-monroe-and-adams-presidency-102/the-era-of-good-feelings-550-9585/

Following the Era of Good Feelings, rather than the Republican party ceasing to exist like the Federalists, it split off into two branches. One branch was the Jacksonian Democrats, led by Andrew Jackson, and the other was the Whig party, led by Henry Clay. The Whig party was very short lived, however, as the party split and crumbled due to a serious division regarding the issue of slavery. In the following years, a brand new Republican Party re-emerged in place of the Whigs. Influenced by many of the Whig’s ideas, the Republicans quickly rose to prominence.

This brings us to our current system today. The Democrats and the Republicans. Although their views and beliefs have shifted radically over the past century and a half, their dominance in the political system has not. The question is, what if I don’t agree strongly with one side or another? Do I have to pick one? The answer is: No, you can register yourself as an independent, but the system encourages you not to do that.

Allow me to explain. In any Presidential election, there are two elections. There are primary elections, where each party votes on which candidate wants to represent them, and there is the general election, where one Republican takes on one Democrat. If you are not registered with a party, then you are unable to vote in the primary election. This limits your democratic ability as a citizen, which makes it highly encouraged to pick a party, no matter which one, rather than registering as an independent. For those curious, here are all of the current political parties: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G14/parties.phtml

Also notice how I described the general election as “one Republican taking on one Democrat”. I used this phrasing on purpose because the truth of the matter is, those are really the only two parties with any serious contention for the Presidency. Since the modern two-party system of Democrats and Republicans started in 1864, no third party has ever even come close to winning the Presidential race. The closest anyone has come was in the election of 1912, when there were three serious competitors: Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a former president, and Taft was his Secretary of War and the current incumbent, whom Roosevelt had groomed for the race. Roosevelt originally had no intentions of running again, but when Taft served as President he became increasingly conservative which Roosevelt did not like. He left and formed his own party, the Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose party, to run against Taft. You can read more about it here, as I don’t want to go too in depth on this.

http://americanhistory.about.com/od/politicalparties/p/bull_moose.htm

In the end, Roosevelt ending up losing mainly due to a massive lack of funding. The Republicans and Democrats simply had too many wealthy supporters with a seeming endless supply of money for their candidates to fund their campaign. The Republicans and Democrats could travel all across the country to spread their message without any worry about the costs behind it, when any independent party does not have that luxury. In the definition of a true democracy, it is held to be true that any person should have a fair chance in an election. Yet, it seems that only these two parties are able to competitively run in any election because their funding is just insanely large compared to anything else. It makes you wonder, where do these parties get all this money from? Are there any rules to where this money can come from? That is a completely different beast, and I plan to address the funding of political parties in my next civic issues post.

To end this topic for today, let us not forget what George Washington, father of the United States, had to say about political parties and their impact:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Even over two hundred years later, these words still ring very true.