L&T Publisher Earl Watt
Thomas Jefferson so strongly believed in limited federal government, that he refused to declare a national day of Thanksgiving as president. Strange, since he did declare a day of Thanksgiving when he was governor of Virginia.
Jefferson’s chief political rival was John Adams with Alexander Hamilton not far behind. The biggest reason was the differing views on the power of the federal government and the power of state governments. Jefferson was very concerned about an out-of-control federal government where Adams believed a strong central government was needed to keep the nation in tact.
Adams edged Jefferson out to be the second president of the United States, but he turned out to be a one-term president, and Jefferson was elected to back-to-back terms in 1800 and 1804.
More importantly, Jefferson’s democratic Republican Party defeated the Federalists for six straight presidential elections.
Imagine today if one party held the White House for 24 straight years. But that’s what Jefferson’s party did with its view on limited federal control.
The party grew so powerful that the Federalists basically went defunct, and John Quincy Adams was elected president form a field of four Democratic Republican candidates.
But one of the candidates who lost, Andrew Jackson, felt jilted by the loss since he actually won more votes than Adams did, but since no candidate earned a majority of the Electoral College, the House determined the winner and chose Adams.
Jackson split from the party and started the Democratic Party, and the original Jeffersonian party became known as the National Republican Party.
Ae the party in control of the federal government for so long, it was no longer perceived as the party of limited federal power but the symbol of it, and Jackson and the Democrats became the opposition to the federal controlling faction.
America’s system naturally creates a tug of war that is playing out before us now. While the presidency has had partisan balance for the past century, the actual functioning government has become one sided. Wahsington, D.C. is so one sided for the Democratic Party that it has shifted from being a nonpartisan bureaucratic civil servant community to an activist tool for the Democratic Party.
For decades the Republican Party has tried to balance the federal control by protecting states rights and trying to limit the federal government through the limited federal powers.
But the Democratic Party was more active in getting partisans involved in government throughout the federal agencies.
In many ways, Democrats were more inclined to serve in government because they perceive the government as a force for good, as a counterbalance to the private sector.
Republicans, on the other hand, tend to seek private employment and involvement because they perceive government as a necessary evil, mush like the founders did.
The recent election has put the reins of governmental power in the hands of Republicans, at least for two years, and President elect Donald Trump has made an issue of stripping the partisan control of the federal agencies, bringing them back in line of being nonpartisan civil servants with the ability to serve no matter which party is in control of the federal government.
Already, democrats are working on how to counteract this loss of control, and where are they looking for power?
The state level.
According to an article on msn.com called “The coming Democratic revolution,” Franklin Foer made a proposal that would challenge the incoming Trump.
“The innovation that the new federalists propose is that the blue states begin to leverage their big budgets — and their outsize influence — by acting in concert,” he wrote. “Banding together into a cartel, they can wield their scale to bargain to buy goods at discount.”
These 15 Blue States wholly controlled by Democrats control 43 percent of the national GDP, and Foer suggests they use that power to leverage control over the remaining states. He pointed out how California established strict emission controls on automobiles which became the national standards.
Thus, Democrats seek to exert control over the will of the people by forming a cartel of states designed to dismantle Republican victories at the ballot box.
Yes, the party that has the word “democrat” in its name is seeking to leverage economic control rather than control by the will of the people, and they are planning to use state control to re-establish ... (wait for it) federalism.
It’s amazing how elections have a way of realigning and exposing the real quest for power.
