Are today's Tea Party the new Jacksonian Dems?

Started by quiller, September 26, 2010, 10:23:07 PM

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quiller

Here's something for independents to think about. A staunch Dem and friend of embattled Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland now says he won't vote for Strickland, because the Dems have finally drifted too far left. Here's the excerpt, but the whole story bears reading....

QuoteSwoger is a key link in Democrats' potential chain-reaction collapse -- party dissatisfaction with present administrations, locally and nationally, refuting the narrative that it's just the conservative tea party movement that is unhappy.

Swoger and numerous disgruntled Democrats here are picture-perfect examples of the 21st-century Jacksonian Democrat. Skeptical of Eastern elites and big government, they embrace a populism and distrust of the powerful that are parts of our national DNA.

Named for the "scrabble" who ushered Andrew Jackson into the White House, Jacksonians originally were farmers and small-town merchants in the Appalachians and points west who did not trust Eastern Seaboard merchants, bankers and industrialists or their backers in state capitals and Washington.

"From our beginning until Jackson ran for president in 1824, the founding generation of rich planters and business folks from the coast ran the government," explains Robert Maranto, a University of Arkansas political scientist.

He points to a sense that those elites too often favored friends and family through such means as a national bank or government patronage. "And that they thought they were better than everyone else."

Sound familiar?

"The Jacksonian Democrats of today are represented in the more highly frustrated elements of the electorate," says Jeff Brauer, a Keystone College history professor.

In the past, Jacksonian Democrats could be found among Reagan Democrats and Ross Perot independents. Today, Jacksonian elements are found in the dissatisfaction of blue-collar Democrats and the disenchantment of independents; both believed they voted for change in 2008.

"While it is not a perfect correlation, it is in the tea party movement where the strongest connections to Jacksonian democracy are seen," Brauer says.

Nothing could be more Jacksonian than the tea party movement's charge against political and economic elites, Washington and Wall Street insiders.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/26/todays_jacksonians_107314.html


zip

  This is not the democrat party that alot of dems attached themselves too...Id bet theres alot of dems and moderate dems not happy right now

quiller

The terrible thing is, there were once Dems you could trust. That was back when we had teachers and not educrats.

Now all we have are the gangsters, who conned the already-left-leaning media into ignoring what unions were doing to our schoolkids. Small wonder America's no longer in charge. The NEA was the one "teaching" us....