We sit today on our living room sofas and La-Z-Boy recliners — or, if you are in the middle class, milk crates — in eager and perhaps even wild anticipation of the latest round of intelligent and honest presidential campaign ads.
In one ad that debuts tomorrow, the GOP will announce that the West Nile virus “and many other foreign diseases” were carried to America in the paper folds of Barack Obama’s phony birth certificate. The Democrats will counter with a video of a sad, hungry, swimming polar bear as a scientist uses a pie chart to show the No. 1 cause of ozone depletion is Mitt Romney’s hairspray.
(Unexpected TV moment: Out of nowhere, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie lumbers onto the stage and eats the pie chart.)
Seriously, on this in-between day — the Republican convention mercifully ended last week with a platform that includes a once-a-month “Makeup-Optional Day” for women, and the Democratic convention opens Tuesday with the ceremonial duct-taping of Vice President Joe Biden’s mouth — let’s take a look at the histories of the two political parties that make this the greatest nation on Earth, even if you include Texas.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 when a coalition of Northern anti-slavery politicians held its first meeting in the town of Ripon, Wis., opening that first gathering by declaring “O Non Invitus Rohn Palus” (“Oh, no, who invited Ron Paul?”).
By 1860, just six short years after its formation, the GOP (“Grand Old Party” or “Guys Owning Pacemakers”) had surged to great popularity, culminating its rapid ascent with the election of President Abraham Lincoln. Historical footnote: On Nov. 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered this message:
“Abe Lincoln
1447 Oak Street
Apartment 16-B
Gettysburg, PA 98376″
This became known as the Gettysburg Address.
Sorry.
Anyway, the very first Republican nominating convention was held in Philadelphia in 1856. The party’s name was the work of famous New York newspaper columnist Horace Greeley, who wrote, “We think some simple name like ‘Republican’ would more fitly designate those who are united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of liberty … .”
(In 1865, Greeley penned these even more famous words: “Go West, young man, go West. Although, to be honest, you might want to skirt Utah and most of Wyoming.”)
That official formation of the Republican Party came just months after an actual incident on the U.S. Senate floor in which South Carolina Democrats Preston Brooks and Lawrence Keitt savagely attacked Republican Charles Sumner, beating him with a cane, because Sumner had spoken out against slavery. Democrat Brooks was heard to say, after the attack, “Next time I will have to kill him.”
That ugly and violent incident will probably not be mentioned by the Democrats at their convention. Although, frankly, if Biden can get the tape off his mouth, you never know.
The history of the Democratic Party — its convention starts Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C., with Nancy Pelosi kicking things off by singing the patriotic Irving Berlin ballad “God Bless Me” — goes back even farther, to the 1830s.
The party was built by Martin Van Buren after the gradual disintegration of an actual period in American history known as the Era of Good Feelings (1816-24).
(Historical footnote: The Era of Really Good Feelings was ushered in during the 1993-2001 Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton, with his introduction of the Hey, Monica, Hillary’s Out Of Town Again Act.)
In its earliest years, the Democratic Party, led by presidents Andrew Jackson, Van Buren and James K. Polk, championed the expansion of new farmlands and the acquisition of vast new land in what is now the American Southwest. The Democrats did this with a compassionate eye toward all people, unless the people happened to ride horses, hunt with arrows and live in tents.
The donkey became the symbol of the Democratic Party during this time because, according to historians, you had to hit President Van Buren with a stick to get him to do anything and once, when he was frightened, his ears perked up, he made a loud “hee-haw” noise and ran away. (He later explained that he’d been startled by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.)
No, actually, and I’m not kidding here, the donkey became the party symbol when opponents called Andrew Jackson a jackass and he decided he liked the comparison to the strong-willed beast.
The elephant became the opposing symbol in 1877 when Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes, angered by a reporter’s question, soaked the entire press corps by blowing 40 gallons of water out of his nose.
And, as we know, some 100 years later Mitt Romney began killing the polar bears.
Rich Tosches, a former Denver Post staff writer, also writes for the Colorado Springs Independent.