As George Washington finished his first term in 1792, the political parties he so feared would weaken the Union emerged. Under one banner was the “anti-administration” or “Democratic-Republican” party led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. This party favored free trade, alliance with France rather than Britain, stronger state governments, and strict curbs on federal authority according to the Constitution’s enumerated powers. Opposing them were John Adams and Alexander Hamilton’s “Federalists,” who favored closer commercial ties with Great Britain, protective tariffs for American manufacturers, and greater federal authority – especially for the president.
James Madison, the US Constitution’s lead author and foremost defender during the ratification process, watched with dismay as former allies, especially Alexander Hamilton — with whom Madison had co-written the Federalist Papers — stretch the Constitution – that “power given by liberty” – past its enumerated limits. In 1792, the American people had just discarded King George III’s rule, freed themselves from English mercantilism, and established a compound republic of shared state and national sovereignty with the Constitution. Madison believed that the people shared the new Democratic-Republican Party’s desire for a small but effective national government, strict observance of the Constitution, and commercial freedoms rather than special privileges for favored industries like banking, manufacturing, and shipping.
Writing in the National Gazette, Madison pinpointed the divide between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans: Federalists believed men could not govern themselves without, “the pageantry of rank, the influence of money and emoluments, and the terror of military force.” Meanwhile, Democratic-Republicans found these ideas contradicted the American Revolution’s spirit, and believed mankind capable of governing itself.
Interestingly, Madison noted that Federalists, who sought greater concentration of power, were fewer in number than the Democratic-Republicans. He wrote, “It will be equally their [Federalists’] true policy to weaken their opponents by … taking advantage of all prejudices, local, political, and occupational, that may prevent or disturb a general coalition of sentiments.” The Federalists could not win directly, so they inflamed regional pride and jealousy, class tension, and “occupational” special interests to create a majority coalition to uphold unpopular elite interests. Sound familiar?
Since the Civil War era, the Democratic Party (which ironically grew out of Jefferson and Madison’s small government party) has won when it attracts enough disparate interest groups disaffected with the Constitution and mainstream American society into a majority. The party, as seen then and now, inflames ethnic, racial, sexual, class, and regional jealousies. Only between 1932-1968 did the dominant “New Deal Democrats” represent a broad cross-section of Americans.
In the late 1800s, this coalition consisted of the urban poor, new immigrants, and religious minorities in the North and a thumping majority of white southerners, who had just lost a bid to exit the Union. Meanwhile, Republicans appealed to the median American voter of the late 19th Century: Protestant, rural, northern, married, and attached to the Union. This was the “median voter” coalition, which strengthened itself with upwardly-mobile immigrants – such as Milwaukee’s Germans – after William McKinley’s 1896 pivot toward free trade and the Democrats’ turn to economic populism. This equation generally favored the Republicans, as the northern states represented a majority of both seats in the House of Representatives and electoral votes. Republicans held the presidency for 32 of the 40 years between 1868 and 1908. Yet Democrats occasionally won when segments of the GOP coalition fractured.
Today, the Democratic Party is like its old self and the even-older Federalist Party. The elite interests that run the Democratic Party — academia, corporate America, entertainment moguls, professional associations dependent on government largesse, public-sector labor unions – have very unpopular ideas. Democrats refuse to restrict third-trimester abortion even though 80% of Americans oppose it. The party ranks climate change above Americans’ economic struggles, inflation, or the national security consequences of strangling US oil and gas production. But public opinion surveys consistently rate climate change as a lower concern than COVID-19, inflation, the economy, and immigration. Radicals use the K-12 system to teach that America has evil roots, that DEI is the new God, and that hard facts are subordinate to ideological censure. Yet, 96% of adults believe education’s main purpose is either “prepare students academically,” “prepare students for work,” or “prepare students to be good citizens,” not wokeness, according to the National Education Association (NEA) itself.
With ideas so niche, so restricted to a handful of wealthy liberal enclaves, it is no wonder that the Democratic Party must inflame racial, sexual, and economic jealousies to win elections. Americans, just as with the election of 1800, which heralded unbroken Democratic-Republican dominance until the Jacksonian Era, must reject this systematic effort to divide our society for the narrow interests of a few. Today’s Republican Party must represent the Founding ethic — that mankind can govern itself without a technocratic elite, that we need not the micromanagement of our betters — to make itself a worthy outlet for America’s modern rejection of the old Federalist sensibility.
Nathan Richendollar is a summa cum laude economics and politics graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA. He lives in Southwest Missouri with his wife Bethany and works in the financial sector.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.