The First Time Party Bigwigs Tried to Stop a Front-Runner From Becoming President It Backfired

The First Time Party Bigwigs Tried to Stop a Front-Runner From Becoming President It Backfired—Big-time
What the GOP can learn from the story of Andrew Jackson in 1824.

America has never seen a presidential candidate like this before. Detractors point to his lack of political experience, his poor grasp of policy, his alleged autocratic leanings and his shady past. They believe this man without much of a political platform (but with interesting hair) has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to be president. Yet in defiance of conventional wisdom, he is leading his three main rivals in the race for the White House, and party bigwigs are at a loss how to respond. No, it’s not Donald Trump. His name is Andrew Jackson, and the year is 1824.

Andrew Jackson was one of America’s first political outsiders. Born to impoverished immigrants in the backwoods of the South, he was tough, thin-skinned and fiercely confrontational—a brawling Jackson once took a musket ball in the chest before killing a rival in a duel. Resolute and strategically brilliant, Jackson rose through the ranks to become the greatest war hero of his generation. Known by his supporters as Old Hickory, Jackson stirred passions in the American people that his presidential rivals John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay could only dream of. Tens of thousands flocked to the charismatic outsider who positioned himself as a steadfast defender of the Republic. Jackson’s rallies dwarfed those of his rivals. Yet he had little political experience and plenty of baggage. Jackson was, his rivals believed, more of a celebrity than a serious candidate.

Jackson knew who the Americans where. He ran all the American Indians to their reservations in the west. If Trump does what he says and all the illegals go home it will be the most amazing times in our current history. Jackson Indian Removal
Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.” As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone” that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. (This “Indian territory” was located in present-day Oklahoma.)

That is not true, at all. Certain groups have switched what side they vote for, certain states. Rhode Island was last a Republican state in the 20s. Since 1928 it’s only gone Republican in landslides. Were Republicans the bad guys in 1924? Calvin Coolidge? Of course not. Socialist scum like FDR and WJ Bryan carried the South, carried a lot of rural areas, were they the good guys? Um, hell no.

The names have changed, they’ve broken apart and re-formed but we’ve always had the same 2 parties and their current ideologies are the natural evolution of their original ones, no magical “switch” occurred.

Party A, call it the economically rational party, Federalist, Adams-Clay, Whig, Republican. One demographic has stuck with this party from the beginning, the wealthy, job producers, wealth creators.

Party B, Jeffersonian Republicans, Jacksonians, Democrats

One demo they’ve been pandering to at least since the Irish came, immigrants.

Socialism is the natural evolution of the stupid agrarian populism (if you think that was “conservatism” you are not correct) that was Party B’s original ideology.

That’s isn’t to say that founding fathers like Jefferson or even later figures like Jackson were bad people. All of them would shoot the current democrats (and many/most Republicans) in the face, there weren’t ANY people in the country like the pusbags who currently vote democrat.

Personally I think Jackson was kinda a cool dude, I especially like how he told secessionists he’d kick their butts if they tried anything, but I wouldn’t have voted for him, he wasn’t a good President and may have been a bit nutso.

And he certainly wasn’t entitled to the Presidency because of his plurality in 1824, in the procedure laid out in the constitution for that eventuality he lost fair and square. It wasn’t a “corrupt bargain”, that was Jacksonian propaganda. Clay and Adams were natural allies. If the parties hadn’t been in flux at the time with the Federalists dead only one of them would have run in the general election, and only one of Jackson/Crawford would have run.

Imagine we had one party now (no jokes) and because it was the only major party everyone was in it and it fractured and 4 people ran for President. Let’s say Bernie, Hillary, Trump, and Cruz. Let’s say Bernie places first in votes popular and electoral but no one has a majority of e votes. Let’s say Cruz came in 4th and is eliminated from the House vote. Let’s further say Cruz is the Speaker of the House. And that Hillary had a stroke and is pretty much not under consideration save by her hardcore supporters.

Now say Cruz helps Trump win the contingent election in the House, and is made Secretary of State. Is that a “corrupt bargain” like Bernie would claim? Or is it someone logically choosing to elect someone they’re much ideologically closer to rather than some other jerk he’s ideologically opposed to who thinks he’s entitled because he came in first (ignoring the fact that the vast majority voted AGAINST him, 59% in Jackson’s case)? Is the cabinet post a bribe? Or a no brainier appointment of an excellent person on the same side as you who helped you win?

Excellent analysis, Impy. And that’s a great explanation of the 1824 presidential election in modern terms (although Clay and JQ Adams were more similar in style—and on ideology, for the most part—than are Cruz and Trump).

I will quibble on how Democrats pandered to immigrant groups consistently since the 1840s. The Democrats didn’t do much to attract Germans (mostly Catholics from Bavaria) that emigrated following the Revolution of 1848 and soon would become the backbone of the Republican Party in much of the Midwest (and in random pockets such as Louisville, KY and the Texas Hill Country) due to their principled aversion to slavery, nor the Cubans that fled Castro’s tyranny in the early 1960s (Kennedy’s cowardly treason during the Bay of Pigs invasion made Cubans one of the strongest GOP voting blocks in the nation for the next 45 years or so, nor really the Vietnamese that escaped Communist death camps. The Democrats won’t pander if doing so will conflict with their basic Leftism, so they preferred to lose the German vote in the 1850s and ‘60s rather than to appear to be anything but coddling of slavery and to lose the Cuban and Vietnamese vote during the Cold War and beyond than to appear to be anything but coddling of Communism.

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