A Bad Idea Minutes Before Insurrection
By ice rivers
- 1348 reads
Return with me now to the days of old, five minutes before the insurrection when Ted Cruz was undermining our electoral process and referring to the election of 1876 as a shining moment in national decision making. Can't we just go back 146 years?
Okay, let's do that.
In 1876 Custer had recently been slaughtered courtesy of the Sioux and the Cheyenne, thus ending any speculation that Custer might run for president.
Organizers of major league baseball founded the National league.
Mark Twain published The Adventurers of Tom Sawyer.
The Philadelphia Exposition featured new inventions such as the telephone, the typewriter and perhaps the brightest of ideas, the electric light.
The outgoing administration of U.S. Grant was alcohol soaked and scandal ridden.
The status of freedmen as voters was completley up in the air but not as freakin' unthinkable as the vote of freedwomen. God knows what would happen if THEY got to vote.
For the first time American exporting exceeded American importing.
1876 was a Presidential election year.
On the Republican side, James Blaine was the front runner for his party's nomination until a failure in the convention hall's lighting system occurred which disrupted the eloquent speech nominating him. The lighting failure caused adjournment to the following day which caused a loss of momentum for Blaine which led to deadlock on the sixth ballot which led to the choice of inoffensive Ohio Homeboy Rutherford B. Hayes as the Repo candidate.
The Dems, unimpeded by lighting failures, nominated their preconvention favorite Samuel J. Tilden, Governor of New York on their second ballot.
Both subsequent campaoigns were run on the cheap.
Tilden refused to spend funds on crucial states that might have helped him win build more formidable majorities, a technique Hillary Clinton clung to in her unimaginable loss to Donlad Trump a century and a half later. Hayes concentrated on winning New York and Indiana while abandoning the Republicans of the South. Tilden promised the South "home rule" which meant klan rule. Meanwhile Hayes waved the "bloody shirt" which meant that a Tilden victory would undermine the Northern victory in the Civil War, won with cataclysmic expenditures of blood and carnage.
The election was held on November 7th.
By the morning of the 8th it appeared clear that Tilden had won with a popular vote margin of 250.000. Before conceding, the Republican's checked in with the pro-Hayes New York Times. After this consultation, the Republicans discovered that if they could secure the disputed votes in Florida, South Carolina, Louisian and Oregon, they could eke out 185-184 electoral vote victory,
Rutherford did not concede.
Bribes were dispatched. Promises were tendered. The national mood darkened. To defuse the tension, a bi-parisan electoral commission was established made up of members of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court. The Repos controlled the Senate. The Dems controlled the House. If everyone voted according to party affiliation, the deciding vote would fall to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bradley, a moderrate Republican.
The vote went precisely according to party line with Bradley casting the deciding vote in favor of Hayes.
(In 2020, that would have been Pelosi from the House MCConnell from the Senate and Republican installed John Roberts from the Court)
The Democrats, in control of the House, retained enough filibuster power to delay the decision past the March 4th inauguration date, which would initiate a constitutional crisis upon a country still reeling from a Civil War...a presidential assasination and a constitutional confrontation.
To avoid Civil War 2: The Sequel, negotiations between parties took place.
Home rule returned to the South.
Southern whites agreed to honor the political rights of blacks under the post Civil War legislation.
Federal money would be devoted to southern projects
On March 2, 1877, two days before inauguration, Hayes was certified the wimmer by a one vote electoral vote margin.
Hayes became immediately known as Rutherfraud.
Rutherfraud served a one term presidency that he couldn't wait to complete as he really didn't want the job in the first place.
Hayes paved the way for James Garfiled who re-established the standard for presential assasination politics followed by Grover Cleveland who established the standard for spinning sexual standard in the White House who established the grandsons of former weird Presidents as President.
In 1988, Harrison became the second Presidnt in twelve years to win the presidency without winning the popular vote.
Unbelievable.
In the twenty first century we took sixteen years.
So for God sake Senator Cruz, let's try to forget about 1876 instead of raising it as a banner for the insurrection that is only minutes away as you MAGA your ass off and the mob gathers,
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Comments
I'm not sure I follow your
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning, but an entertaining detour.
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Reading this made me look it
Reading this made me look it up on wikipedia. This one year seems the basis for all the films we used to watch on rainy Saturday afternoons on our black and white telly. AND Heinz ketchup was invented.
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Thanks for this one, ice.
Thanks for this one, ice. Made me chuckle, shake my head, occasionally shake my fist. Those who do not learn from history, etc etc. Loving the phrase 'MAGA your ass off'. Just about sums it up.
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Fascinating! This shows just
Fascinating! This shows just how little most of us really know about American history, including many Americans themselves. It is amazing how so few years after the Civil War the settlement of it was still in danger, even in the democratic system! And the parallels to the last two elections are also notable!
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