Washington a Republican????

from PolMach Forums
Why is Washington a Republican. In reality, he wasn't a Republican, and his policies weren't especially conservative. Neither party should be able to claim Washington as theirs. Why not make Lincoln the last candidate and put another Republican in somewhere, maybe George H. W. Bush, or John McCain, Bob Dole, or someone like that. It just doesn't seem right that Washington's a Republican
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Reply #1 from PolMach Forums Top
Does it seem right that Jefferson is a big-government, pro-Federalism Democrat when he was in fact an ardent states right advocate and an opponent of large federal government?

Don't take these things seriously? The really loopy candidates like Washington and Jefferson are kind of a joke to even be in the game.
Reply #2 from PolMach Forums Top
Washington & Jefferson was of different parties than we currently have. Washington was a 'Federalist', and Jefferson was a 'Democratic-Republican'/'Republican' (not the same Republicans as the 1856 one). Federalists were people who supported the Constitution and Democratic-Republicans were people who didn't support it. Those were the parties of the day. Now, that explains why Virginia (which is home to Jamestown, the first British colonial city/town in America, (St. Augustine was Spanish...) was the 10th state to join the US of A. Because Jefferson, a native Virginian didn't believe in the Constitution. Patrick Henry also was an anti-Constitution person, if I'm correct. I think it was the Constitution, was it?

Anyway, the parties that we're talking about start at the presidency of Andrew Jackson of the Democratic party. This was the real Democratic party, which means everyone before was either a Federalist, or some other party....The Republicans of the time were called 'Whigs' and they were much like the Republicans in some ways. The Whig Party became the Republican [or evolved into] in 1856, in which was an unsuccessful year for Republicans. The only reason Lincoln won in 1860 was because of the Democrats' split. His administration was good to the American people in many ways: one because of the Emancipation of Proclamation (in which didn't do much, and was only freeing slaves in Union-controlled states). That is how the Republicans went on to win the next few elections starting in 1869 after the V.P Andrew Johnson (who was a Democrat) didn't run anymore. Ulysses S. Grant became president, and Republicans controlled the country until 1884, when Grover Cleveland became president.

I think that the Federalists & Democratic-Republican parties should come back for 'fun', just to make things equal. So, no, the Federalists didn't lean to the Republicans. The Democratic-Republicans didn't lean to the Democrats. They were parties created because of different beliefs..
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from PolMach Forums Top
The Democratic-Republicans or anti-federalists were NOT anti-constitution.

The clash was over how to interpret the Constitution, but all of the Democratic Republicans supported it ( no one was calling for the Articles of Confederation to be revived). The DR's ultimately lost on every significant issue of interpretation, but at the time, they were the dominant party by far.
Reply #4 from PolMach Forums Top
how could Jefferson be anti-constitution. Didn't he write it? I may be wrong
Reply #5 from PolMach Forums Top
Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence.

The Constitution was largely the work of Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and other Federalists, but with massive amounts of input from the Constitutional Convention. Jefferson was the leader of the anti-Federalist group at the constitution and many key omissions from the constitution (like the lack of judicial review being specified as a power of the Supreme Court) are due to his group.

But the document is largely credited to the Federalists.
Reply #6 from PolMach Forums Top
jscott: Thanks...I knew it was something about the Constitution....

Oh, and actually, jscott, Jefferson drafted the declaration of independence. It has been said that Jefferson didn't write all of it, or he wrote very little, but how can you believe something like this, when there is no evidence???

The Federalists were: George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams [possibly the last Federalist-roots known in a presidency].

The Democratic-Republicans were: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John {James?} Monroe

The Democrats (early ones) were: Andrew Jackson, Martin VanBuren, James Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan

The early Republicans were: Abraham Lincoln

The Whigs were: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler [until the Whig party dumped him], Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore

Interesting was the most 'cheating' election ever...even more than 2000...I'm not even sure if this is legal...during the election of John Quincy Adams the Federalist, and Andrew Jackson the Democratic-Republican, two other candidates were in the race. By election day, Andrew Jackson had the lead everywhere: electoral votes, and popular vote, but John Quincy was declared winner when the other two candidates handed over their electoral and popular votes to him. Now, this is not legal, and I think it was pretty much a joke. Too bad John Quincy's V.P. Jake Callhoun dumped him for Mr. Jackson.
Reply #7 from PolMach Forums Top
jscott: Thanks...I knew it was something about the Constitution....

Oh, and actually, jscott, Jefferson drafted the declaration of independence. It has been said that Jefferson didn't write all of it, or he wrote very little, but how can you believe something like this, when there is no evidence???

The Federalists were: George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams [possibly the last Federalist-roots known in a presidency].

The Democratic-Republicans were: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John {James?} Monroe

The Democrats (early ones) were: Andrew Jackson, Martin VanBuren, James Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan

The early Republicans were: Abraham Lincoln

The Whigs were: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler [until the Whig party dumped him], Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore

Interesting was the most 'cheating' election ever...even more than 2000...I'm not even sure if this is legal...during the election of John Quincy Adams the Federalist, and Andrew Jackson the Democratic-Republican, two other candidates were in the race. By election day, Andrew Jackson had the lead everywhere: electoral votes, and popular vote, but John Quincy was declared winner when the other two candidates handed over their electoral and popular votes to him. Now, this is not legal, and I think it was pretty much a joke. Too bad John Quincy's V.P. Jake Callhoun dumped him for Mr. Jackson.
Reply #8 from PolMach Forums Top
The election with the biggest fraud in history is not John Q. Adams v. Jackson, but the victory of Rutherford B. Hayes over Samual Tilden. Tilden won the election, but the Republicans declared that several states were "disputed" and a party line vote in the House settled the election in favor of Hayes. Democrats went along with this because of a promise by Hayes to end Reconstruction, which he did.
Reply #9 from PolMach Forums Top
While Washington was never a member of a political party (in fact, he warned against them in his second inagural speech(I think that was the one), he was a Constitutional Federalist. Since the majority of those became the Federalist party, opponents of the Democratic Republicans (now the Democratic Party), I suppose that's the justification for making him a Republican.

The funny thing is though that the thing the Constitutional Federalists (as opposed to the Federalist party which had a broader platform) supported primarily was a stronger central government as opposed to states' rights, which is today more a Democratic than a Republican stance.
Reply #10 from PolMach Forums Top

I think in games terms Washington more some similarities to modern Republicans, and Jefferson to modern Democrats. At least, the opposite classification would be even more inappropriate.

Washington and his supporters (Adams, Hamilton, Jay I think) were widely perceived as being more favorable to business interests. They also recognized that good relations with Great Britain were paramount for reasons of commerce and security. Jeffersons and the Democrats on the other hand wanted America to remain a nation of small farmers, and (because they took a rosy/naive view of the recent bloody revolution there) were strong supporters of France, which was in a more or less continuous state of war with Britain. Washington and Adams, and especially Hamilton, were viciously smeared by Jefferson, Madison, et al as closet royalists conspiring to (re-)establish a monarchy, and in return the Democrats were called (with a bit more justification, IMO) Jacobins and rabble-rousers.

In outlook, I would say Washington was conservative, and Jefferson more radical. It's true that the Federalists wanted a larger/stronger central government, which is not something conservatives would subscribe to today, but you have to remember at the time they were starting with NO central government at all and all the real power in the hands of the states. Oddly, "federalism" has become almost a synonym for "states rights" today, but in Washington and Jefferson's time, they were opposite philosophies.

The Whigs, who are much closer relatives of the Republican Party (Lincoln started his political career as a Whig) were in turn the decendents of the Federalists, in that both opposed the Democrats from the right (pro-commerce/development angle).
Reply #11 from PolMach Forums Top
Its a mistake to try to put current political labels on historical candidates. Many times a single issue would dominate the party at the time as the religious right has changed the current Republican party and civil rights changed the Democrats in the 60s. The game does the only logical thing, it takes the party back historically. Washington was a Federalist, a party that later became the Whigs and then during a split became the current Republicans. Going by the issues of today I really doubt that Teddy Roosevelt would be a Republican with his stances on big business and the environment, but he may be a bad example because he was always seen as a maverick in Republican circles. In fact he was nominated for VP in order to get him out of the way. Little did they know that McKinley would be assasinated and Roosevelt would split the party in 1912. Republicans in the past were called conservatives mostly for their fiscal conservatism. But the three most prominent Presidents to run up the deficit were the last three Republicans, Reagan/Bush/W. Bush.