Republican / Democrat - What is The Difference?

On the eve of the Iowa Caucus, I thought it apropos to point out to many of you whom, of no fault of your own, are ignorant of an amazing fact about the democrat and republican parties (as it were). Thomas Jefferson (#3 president) is listed as an Democrat-Republican. In general, after him, all presidents are some definition of D or R with the few Whig exceptions that all (amazingly), die in office for various reasons. The 2 party system starts to look a lot like a 1 party system as you look back into the history of american presidents. In my opinion, it gets REALLY weird when you start to look at the presidents from about Teddy Rosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and on. The country goes decidedly "progressive" and I think that is exactly what the ideological fights are about now. Trouble is, there are very few that remember any previous times so we are dependent upon people that read history and have some sort of understanding about it. Personally, I believe that the progressives have had their chance and their model has failed for the country and the world.

I would like to see America balance her books and show that light to the world. Can we step out of the red ink and darkness of indebtedness that we have been entrenched in for so long and break this curse? If America truly is the "richest" country in the world then whom are we indebted to, and why? I dare say that it is not Israel. I dare say it is not Europe, or even China (overall). So who is "our" master that we owe as the people of America? As the people of the world? Answer this question and us slaves will know our master, to be sure.

I think I may have mixed two posts here but will let it stand unless the mods disagree.

Happy New Year to all!

Chems

A good song, probably describes the feeling of the average person regarding politics
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One?
One starts with a capital, say it with me now, "D.
And the other one with a capital, all together now, "R".

The difference between the two parties is that ONE of them CLEARLY fights tooth and nail for the WEALTHY, while the other considers helping the middle-class and poor.

Some may believe the conspiracy that they both may be puppets for something else, but REGARDLESS of that, it is CLEAR that one of these parties LOVES to RAPE the middle-class a LOT WORST than the other. That would be the republicans by the way...

I do not care for EITHER party, but I especially HATE the one who SCREWS the middle-class just to help the wealthy who surely do not NEED their help. Especially when there are GOOD and hardworking families unable to put food on the table while the republicans main concern is preventing the wealthy from being made to PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE.

Priorities, priorities, eh? When it comes to showing their true colors, those good ol republicans put on a good show of this in very recent times.

Well, if you look back at the history books you'll see how it happened. One of the early original parties were the Federalists (I don't know if you've heard of "The Federalist Papers" but we had to read about them when I was taking history) -- they were supporters of bankers and big business. The ones against them (the "anti-Federalist party") were the Democratic Republicans (in other words, they wanted a "one man one vote" republic and not a representative system like we have now) split up after they couldn't agree on a candidate for President.

They formed the Democratic party; their chief rivals were the Whigs (holdover from England, again mostly composed of people for big business -- as opposed to the common man.) The Whigs eventually go on to form the Republican party.

The Democrats tend to favor unions and "one man one vote." The Republicans prefer the concepts that the Federalists had, which indicated that business trumped many other causes (anti-union, for instance, anti-labor laws) and preferred a representative system similar to what we have today.

The wikipedia articles on the two parties are pretty short when it comes to history but will give you an idea. The actual history is FAR more interesting than you can cover in a few brief paragraphs.