In the weird position of bashing the Democratic Majority for spitting out pointless resolutions about Confucius and looking into the “Violent Injury in Violent Sports” problem…

At least Confucius is sort of a non-partisan back slap honoree.  The Republicans are spitting out a Measure to commend the Acorn investigators — they who tried to rebut the troubled organization’s claim about one of the non-biting city’s claims with a muted video and silent press conference.

Sponsor: Rep Olson, Pete [TX-22]
Rep Broun, Paul C. [GA-10] –
Rep Brown, Henry E., Jr. [SC-1]

The other back slap “Commending” goes to the Tea-Party Movement.  All 25 Kajillion of them.

Whereas, on September 12, 2009, hundreds of thousands of American patriots, who refuse to sit idly by as the Federal Government advances skyrocketing deficits, taxpayer-funded bailouts, pork-barrel projects, burdensome taxes, unaccountable policy czars, command-and-control energy policy, and a government takeover of health care, came to Washington, DC, to show their disapproval; […]

Whereas estimates of the number of people who peacefully marched from Freedom Plaza to the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on September 12, 2009, range as high as 1,700,000 marchers;

If you say so.
Good thing Jeff Flake doesn’t appear on the list of 75 (or is it 7500?) co-sponsors, of I’d be able to throw his Confucius line back at him.  I leave it up to you to see if other Confucius nay-sayers pop up on the list.

I suppose it could be worse.  See this man’s lonely battle for expressing approval for “Teen Read Week.” Fight the good fight, Representative David Roe of Tennessee.  Fight the good fight!
We also see the famous Alan Grayson commending Obama for his Nobel Prize.  Let’s see if any Republican sign up for that.

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed this little Resolution.

Honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizing his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.

Resolved, That the House of Representatives honors the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizes his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.

Jeff Flake responded with this press release.

Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today released the following statement regarding his vote against H.Res.784, a bill “honoring the 2560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizing his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.”“He who spends time passing trivial legislation may find himself out of time to read healthcare bill,” said Flake.

The Resolution opens itself up for such witty repartee.

“I’m sure Confucius would be pleased to know that he has been honored by the U.S. House of Representatives on his birthday, but unfortunately for us and for him, he died 2,488 years ago,” Emerson said in a statement.[…]
Instead of supporting the legislation, Emerson offered her own take on the lessons of Confucius.“Confucius says: ‘An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger,’ but our oppressive government will end the fiscal year $1.48 trillion in debt. [and etc.]

Now, weirdly enough, looking at the roll call, one man you’d expect to go against this bill — Ron Paul — voted “yes.”  Well, here’s a defender of that vote and the man, but it still strikes me as a man who compromised his stated principles on the matter of voting “no” for such frivolous items — the quote I recall from the type of my head was Paul demeaning a resolution about Peanuts creator Charles Schultz.  We now know Ron Paul’s lines.  He’s pro-Confucius and anti-Snoopy.

In other Congressional business, in a seeming nod to the dark days  of the Congressional investigations into Steroids and Bush’s State of the Union speech which focused 99 words on the issue of Steroids…

the House Judicary Committee looked into Football Injuries, and specifically the question of whether head injuries might lead to long term cognitive impairment.

“The N.F.L. sort of has this blanket denial or minimizing of the fact that there may be this link,” Representative Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat of California, said to Mr. Goodell during the daylong hearing. “And it sort of reminds me of the tobacco companies pre-’90s when they kept saying, ‘Oh, there’s no link between smoking and damage to your health.’ ”

I can say with utmost confidence that, yes, constant hits to the head have a decent chance to lead to such troubles.  I’m not sure where this Congressional Investigation is supposed to lead — but probably not anywhere that would deal with past or current leaders of government or finance.

I saw this quote at dailykos, from Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
“I think it is perfectly clear that most Americans will treat the vote to get on the bill as a vote on the substance of the bill. So our view is that cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill is a vote to endorse a half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, $400 billion in new taxes, and higher insurance — health insurance premiums for everyone else.

Preen all you want, but sharp eyed partisan observers usually view this procedural as tantamont to vote passage — and I’ll link to one example in a moment.  I suppose some matters depend, roughly, on how toxic you view such and such a bill.  I imagine this dailykos poster would view things differently sometime in the Bush Administration, for instance.

Now, you can make principled stances for backing off the Filibuster before voting nay.  The problem with Joseph Lieberman is that he shows little consistency with these things.    Yesterday, Lieberman defended his threat to join a Republican Filibuster as a Senator’s prerogative.  This differs markedly from the Bush Administration — there are two items in this huffington post slide-show that are relevant. — when he  voted for cloture on the Bankruptcy Reform Bill before voting for it — and arguing that vote in his election contest against Ned Lamont.  (See too the double-backing partisan rule as against Mitch McConnell from liberal bloggers.)  I distinctly remember an interview where Lieberman was lobbed the question of his cloture vote, where he hemmed and hawed until a commercial break saved him from explaining his duplicity.  The other famous stand on filibusters came when he was one of the “Gang of 14”, stating that filibusters would end in “all but extraordinary circumstances.”

Interesting, and for the sake of consistency that should drive him to a different stance today on Health Care Reform.  Sadly, no.

I hasten to add I’m mistaken in calling him inconsistent on this score, as there is one consistency to his procedural voting.  Like any good partisan, he lines up for one party’s Filibusters and against the other party’s Filibusters.  But everyone already knew that.

But, I guess, this quote is supposed to absolve something or other.  “Joseph Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid’s problems.”  — Harry Reid. I suspect third person references to yourself is a tell of some type, but I’m not sure a tell of what.

………………………..

Modest update regarding where he went for support for his 2006 General Election.:

”Iraq has now become what everyone thinks it was before, another battlefield in this war with Islamic terrorists, and we’ve got to end it with a victory,” Mr. Lieberman said during an interview with the nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Glenn Beck on Tuesday.

In the 15-minute interview, Mr. Lieberman warned against the United States becoming isolationist, and he seemed to agree with Mr. Beck’s repeated statements suggesting that the war against Islamic terrorists represented the brink of an international war. […]

At one point in the interview, Mr. Beck asked pointedly, ”Why is it there aren’t more politicians saying, ‘Guys, this is World War III. We are in deep trouble?’ ”

Mr. Lieberman responded by saying that he thought that both Republicans and Democrats treat ”politics as if it was a sport in which you are on one team,” and that ”the aim is for that team to win.”

”And when you do that, you forget that there are larger interests, which is the interests of the United States of America,” he said. ”The other thing going on here is that you know people don’t like to face the reality of danger, and maybe some politicians don’t like to be the ones to talk about it. But everything you’ve just said is right.”

I passed by a book store yesterday.  One with a giant display in the window advertising an upcoming book.  A book ready for the holiday season.  Though, probably who wants to own this book will have already bought it by then.

I think I’ll go read Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father and then Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue and see what the dichotemous effect is.

“It’s time to start drawing from our proud American Tradition of Burning People in effigy.”  And with that Randall Terry is off, promoting a contest for, coming to youtube soon. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid Burning In Hell.

Proud American tradition?  As represented by the NY Times article of 1854 not available here — first item found on google.  Beyond that, when I think of burning in effigy in these United States, my mind wanders to intimidation against Black People and Civil Rights allies.   The next items in the google search have people in nations with populations hostile to the United States burning Obama in effigy.  This item digs back a bit further into the claim of “Proud American Tradition,” an import if there ever was.  Google news a bit and we get this write-up of a man burned in effigy, which brings us back to the “Religious Unenlightenment” angle. 

But Burning Reid and Pelosi in effigy is supposed to, claims Randall Terry, be an outlet to “let out steam”.

He predicted that because of the “rage” people are feeling in the country, they might resort to graffiti, violence against buildings or, “and God forbid, I pray this doesn’t happen, but I think it’s possible that we could see acts of violence against individuals seen as guilty of a murderous agenda.” He said that his video contest would help eliminate violence by providing an alternative outlet for expression, and give pro-life activists “something to do that’s not inane,” referring to recent mass mailings by conservative organizations to members of Congress with tea bags in envelopes.

Troy Newman, now the president of Operation Rescue, reacted with alarm to Terry’s contest. “When I saw the video I was at a loss for words,” he said. “Randall Terry has gone over the edge to complete lunacy.” Newman said that more than 50 percent of the American people identify themselves as pro-life, but Terry’s “extreme, fringe activities” hurt the movement’s efforts to draw more supporters. “I can’t see any good coming out of that.”

Contest Entry Example #1:  I don’t get it.  Cardboard cutouts of Reid and Pelosi burn in, I guess, Terry’s lawn.  Randall Terry interjects about them burning in Hell.  There is no creativity here.  But I guess it’s just a test example?

Really, Randall Terry is not arguing for much creativity in his contest partipants.  He calls for people to burn images of Reid and Pelosi on Halloween Night.  Follow the lead of that youtube video, and it doesn’t expand much beyond that limited range.  This would tend to end up procuring images of these extreme Christian Fundamentalists burning facsimilies of Reid and Pelosi, and the best I can think of beyond that would be placing the burnings in exotic or ironic locales.  The better contest idea would be to ditch the “Burn in Effigy” and ask for “Burning in Hell” videos– this might inspire storylines or creative conceptions of the the Hell — comical Hell, scary Hell, cartoony Hell.  Maybe some different images of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi along the same lines of the Hell.

Then again, who wants to win any of this stuff?

I have a gut feeling  that Randall Terry has piles of his “Inurrecta Nex”  lying around he just needs to unload.  But I could be wrong.

After a while, these things appear to be a “moving through the motions” situation.  It’s something of a game for some of the 60 Democrats — jumping the hoops of the Insurance Companies, certainly, but also putting on a massive Ego Show for media attention.  So Harry Reid announces he has 58 Democrats down for the “public option” with state opt-out, all well and good but for the two hold-outs who are Ben Nelson and … quick who’s the other one?
… To answer this guy’s question, we don’t float all that much attention to Evan Bayh because there’s a lot of him, and he has to wait behind the others.  He had his day in the sun, and will again.  To quote Harry S Truman, “There are too many Byrds in the Congress.”

Barack Obama called for the Trigger.  His theory is this will get him on over to Olympia Snowe’s magical Senator #61 Republican vote.  This will give vulnerable Democrats cover.  In theory, his campaign and whatever degree he’s spelled anything out for his Health Care fight would tend to have him personally favoring the Public Option with state opt out provision over this trigger mechanism.  In the end, we’ve had Harry Reid pull back from Senator #61 and back to Senator #60 — from Snowe over to Ben Nelson.  And I think what’s coming down the path this week is this “state opt in” — apparently the “opt out” is for the Senator #58.  And so the Republicans have left the building.  And Blanche Lincoln is laid bare.

This is a love for a weird process oriented effect, process trumping content for Obama.  I’ve had a devil of the time understanding why such a thing matters for the President.  Is he looking ahead to fewer than 60 Democrats after November?  Leave aside the “shouldn’t it take 50 Senators and Biden to pass something? question, and I guess that question falls by the wayside because it’s what gives Ben Nelson his power.  How is a vote from Olympia Snowe supposed to give Blanche Lincoln cover?

So the Republican Party of Arkansas is giddy as they stare at Lincoln’s low ratings.  They clap and rub their hands together in glee, as they watch their masterwork campaign attack commercial.

“Blanche Lincoln voted for Commie Socialist Government Health Care.”

And so Blanche Lincoln has two possible courses, depending on the vote of Olympia Snowe.  The favored course would have a Snowe vote.

“Blanche Lincoln teamed up with Republican  Olympia Snowe for common sense Health Care Reform.  Blanche Lincoln: Bi-Partisan Common Sense.”

Is that message supposed to mean something?  Or are we fearing this alternative.  Go to Blanche Lincoln headquarters.  They look at the “Commie Socialist Government” ad.  They look at each other around the room for a response ad idea.  And they all go blank.

“Drat.”  They tell Blanche Lincoln.  “We’ve got nothing.”

Is how this game is supposed to be playing out?  If you say so.

The question for the moment is… Is this anything?  And by that I mean, is this anything new?  It’s been a long time since I just went ahead and reposted a Larouche Daily Briefing  en total, but this is interesting enough.

In previous daily memos, we have seen Larouche do the usual berating of his baby-boomers for doubting.  This one is kind of interesting, in that the berating drips in to the hallowed Youth Members.  We also see that interesting alteration of the “drop dead” moment (and for precise moments of description, you can rely on this factnet post) of when all governing functions would cease to a “Phase Shift”.  It also becomes apparent that perhaps leaving the country happens happens when this  cognitive dissonance is around the bend, so he might “set things straight” upon re-entry. …………………………………………………………..

Oct. 17, 2009  LAROUCHE: OK, first of all, I’m going to chew you out; and you know why. Because some of our idiots, and they tend to run more to the older generation than the younger ones in this case, got the bright idea that I had somehow been mistaken in my forecast of what was going to happen in October. This, as usual, was done; the argument was made on the basis of fraudulent representation of what I had said repeatedly and carefully on that subject during the month of September, and in the first week of October. So, people were trying to insist that I had predicted this general collapse, like a breakdown collapse, and what I was a phase, a critical phase-change which brought us into the threshold of a general collapse. And exactly that has happened.
Now, some of our friends, who we’ve been in a discussion with, have recognized that and gone to the point of making their own calculations to extend my Triple Curve into the more recent developments. And Debbie has seen that. I haven’t seen it as such, but I’ve heard it described, and I know what she has described is quite accurate; that’s exactly the way it has happened. There has been a sudden phase-shift downward in the state of the US and the world economy during the first two weeks of October. It has happened exactly as I said it would happen.
Now, those who profess to doubt that, were basing themselves on public information of the type which is completely crap! In other words, they had no evidence, but they chose to believe that they were shaken in their confidence by what they were reading in the press. And this, I mean, this is really a whore’s game. You know, the whore smiles when the prospective client comes up, and that’s the way some of Boomers acted on this case of this October forecast. What I warned was going to happen, has happened {exactly} as what I warned would happen. There’s no difference from that. But, there was a – people wished to be foolish and prematurely senile, and therefore, they reacted in a way that a prematurely senile person would react. You gotta – don’t appear to be senile! Let me warn you Boomers. It’s dangerous to appear to be senile. They’ll cart you off and kill you, and burn you for ashes! [Laughter] Don’t be senile anymore! And don’t get any more of these crazy fits.
Now, this is mostly comes from the Boomers domination in the regions. It also comes out from some problems in the Leesburg area, where people get – because they’re trying to play games with their own mind – they screw up and forget the point. The way we organize, the way we get our income comes only from what we do through LPAC. We may get some other income from other sources, and we do; but we get because of what we do with LPAC. When you shut down the support of LPAC, and say you’ve got some high priorities or something, we can’t afford LPAC right now, you’re committing suicide, you’re committing political suicide. You’re saying we’re going out of existence. So, you just have to control some of your Boomer friends who are prone to fits of senility. They’re not justified; they haven’t done enough work to become senile, but they take pleasure in doing that.
Anyway, so that’s the problem. And you just – {Don’t do this any more!} This old thing, which comes from some people in the office and some of the regions, really is a kind of moral senility. And it’s done on the thing—[in dumb, whiny voice] “Well, we, some people we talk to said differently. We can’t say that anymore, don’t you understand?” And like all these people going out, they want to talk to somebody about what happened. Instead of telling them what happened, they come out with a long pitch, [same voice] “Well, let me tell you, it’s starts like this…”, and then about a half an hour later, when they’ve finished their wind-up, the person they were talking to has walked away. This typical Boomer stuff!……………………
ALICIA: Hey, Lyn. I just want to ask you a question because it’s been a point of discussion here, you know, it comes up with the OTCs every single day. What are we going to do about the intelligence, because there are a couple of people that we can count on, and if we can a hold of them, it works. But otherwise, it just makes a big difference here if people are in reality, and if they’re not, well, you can see what happens, so… [crosstalk]
LAROUCHE: Two things on this. First of all, what happens is, when we get into a financial bind, the most qualified people just aren’t available, because they’re doing something else. And you get people who are less qualified, and less emotionally stable, who sort of shape the opinion among the Boomer layer in particular. This extends to the phone teams, which are the liaison to various cesspools, which they pass through intellectually in going from one locale to another. And so, you get a real panic of complete incompetence, because you have fewer competent people on the job, from among the Boomer strata in particular. This is my nightmare, because every time I leave that joint, to come to this joint, I can anticipate a catastrophic loss in intellectual capacity represented by organization as a whole there, and internationally immediately. But I have to do things here, because I have things I must do here. We don’t travel back and forth across the Atlantic once a week. So, when I leave the United States, I’m here for some weeks, and every time catastrophe breaks out. Sometimes it comes from some youth problems, but usually the real catastrophes come from the Boomers When the Boomers who are capable and thinking clearly, are tied up, and the other ones who are thinking clearly, or would be thinking clearly, are out there doing something financially, instead of paying attention to politics, then you get, you know, the third team comes in? The ones that haven’t got their jock straps on? [laughter] Or ladies with jock straps, something like that. And that’s what happens.
You have to have a sense of self-defense, what if I didn’t exist, huh? You have to have a sense of bull**** is bull****, and when you can smell it, call it what it is. I laid out some very clear policies on the organization’s approach to October. I did that very carefully, knowing I would be absent during that part of the month. And I said specifically what had to be done, and what had not to be done. And I defined the perspective for this month precisely as I described it, and {as it has happened!} Nothing different than what I described has happened. What I described has happened. You get some guys, who get nervous, and they say, “Uouonh!” [groans] Panic, huh? Something different. Well, it was never different, it was just impressionism of Nervous Nellies. And it was Boomers; it started in the regions, and spilled back into the phone teams. Gerry’s got his back turned, pssfftt! Some wild nonsense comes. And you’ve got some people who are still malicious toward me in the organization, especially among the Boomers. They’re malicious toward me, not because of what I did to them, but of what they did to me, and some Boomers cannot forgive me for what they did to me. That’s the way it works in life, you know. People don’t hate you because of what you did to them; they hate you for they did to you. And that’s what that goes on. Anyway.
………………………………………….

Moving onward, a bit more cognitive dissonance comes into the picture with Cody Jones here telling that he was prepping for the economic collapse, but had to explain to the disbelievers that they’re wrong, and on we go to the Personality Cult of “The One” — and explaining to the LYM cohorts how to keep the faith against the crisis and the lack of Crisis Coverage outside the purview of the cult, to keep the faith as they confront the Masses unaware that they reside in a New Dark Age.  (First three and a half minutes… I hear tell that after that, the hits do keep on coming, but I myself dropped after that.  Note that he himself has no doubt of the New Dark Age.)

Then again, another problem with raising funds is shown around here — people you’d hate meeting at a cocktail party, and the “Unwelcome” sign:
New Fairfield is still stinging from racist and sexist e-mails forwarded by two public officials earlier this month, and Tuesday’s visit by the LaRouche Political Action Committee was the last thing it needed.

She was pushing the beliefs of an American named LaRouche and kept calling him an economist. [Note: an important parcel for Leatherstocking in editing wikipedia articles.  Has had tremendous success at the endevor, and the first paragraph in particular certainly does stink there.  Has a cache of Russian sources at his disposal.  Dennis King comes in here , and refers to the stench this throws on wikipedia.  King then posts something that is within the scope of sort of my pet issue in the Larouche wikipedia items – Leaterhstocking never posts the entirety of what Larouche has said.  Now I leave the digression.]  The last time I heard of him was in 2000 when a van of supporters drove around and indirectly called my aunt a whore.
[…] <tactics here.  A sort of good cop / bad cop.  A few phrases leap out:

 I tried to explain that their message appeared convoluted to people passing by; they said they didn’t care about popular opinion. I tried to explain the problem with Hitler Obama; they said they don’t care about advertising, they care about reality. One of them also said she doesn’t care about truth.

Or, put another way:
 you want an explanation? that just means you are going to have to do some work! I agree with the last poster, you DO sound arrogant as hell! and that may hinder your capability to understand what Larouche is talking about. you may be too emotionally attached to your current axioms, and your arrogance will get in the way of your conceptions being challenged.

Well then.

Posted by The Daily Elitist , Economics at University of Nebraska on April 28, 2009 at 10:15pm  (I don’t believe you, or this set up.)
I long dismissed the LaRouchies as a “cult,” just as I’d been conditioned to by the corporate media and the higher-ups in academia; however, the ongoing financial and economic crisis has made me re-think many of my long-held views concerning economics and social organization generally. I think any honest person even slightly familiar with the work of LaRouche and his supporters must now concede that he’s been right about nearly everything.

Seriously, just read what he has to say – and don’t let anyone else do your thinking for you

I’m frequently surprised by this ahistoricality, or this lack of sense of political history, even from sources that seem  like they should have it who nonetheless betray themselves in a need to make a political pot shot.  This shot from 1948, to the prominent crooks and liars blog, fails where the blog generally shows they don’t have to fail.

The obvious difference between the Republican Party of 1948 and the Republican Party of 2009 is the absence of the lunatic fringe then, which today appears to be driving away all those sane and moderate voices that would otherwise aid in the healing process and perhaps steer the party in a constructive direction.

Like Newt Gingrich singing the praises of George McGovern in order to suggest that unlike Barack Obama, he was decent and pro-American.  The one that keeps getting me?   Turn on Thom Hartmann and you’ll invariably come to the line, as per the repetitive nature of talk radio, about Republicans needing to force the party back to Dwight D Eisenhower’s Republican Party.  This woud be all good and wll, except that in crucial ways, the party was never Dwight D Eisenhower’s.  “I’m not going to discuss personalities” was Eisenhower’s line whenever a figure of the media propped up a question about Joseph McCarthy — who was, in 1952, probably the most popular figure within the Republican Party.  Take a good look at the party platform for that year. 

Maybe we were all insane in 1950, hanging onto the seat of our pants forcing a bleached white culture against the backgrop of Nuclear Annihlation, trying to assemble where the hell the Societ Union found the wherewithall to drop an H-Bomb, and who allowed Stalin to take control of half of Europe.  I’m jumping around and swarthing together a few years into the future with the 1948 Dewey date there, but we can’t describe an “absence of the lunatic fringe” when arguably the Republican Party was all but made up of such things — busily equating Roosevelt and Truman’s New and Fair Deals with Soviet Communism, and having to swallow Thomas Dewey in the manner they had to swallow the candidacy of Willkie.  Joseph McCarthy himself backed the presidential boomlet of Douglas MacCarthur, wearily fired by Truman in a “Profiles in Courage” moment.  The “We elected the wrong General” thought would remain extent for the next half century, and still today I can find you someone saying that.

This article in the American Prospect does a better job of tying post New Deal right-wing ideology and tying to to today’s, though I view it as a bit too straightened into a neat little box.  

Today, we have the “tea-parties”.  A good poll of where that audience stands would show them as pointed to the politicians of Sarah Palin and Ron Paul — two different politicians described here and abouts as “Jacksonian” and “Jeffersonian”, to which you can roll your eyes and mutter “Yeah, whatever.”  There are other politicians like that worth a glancing look — Texas Governor Rick Perry, who I suppose might be “Calhournian”?   Throw in Glenn Beck, and I have no idea how to go about Vinn Diagramming their supporters.  Ron Paul’s crowd is taking to heckling Lindsey Graham and pushing primary challengers in Connecticut and Kentucky — it’s a discordant splinter of the Republican Party.  Sarah Palin, meanwhile, has just endorsed the third party candidacy of Doug Hoffman.  Palin threatened to do this when she formed “SarahPac”, and I’m guessing she may be in the market for a Southern Democratic state legislative candidate to throw her support for to argure a weird sort of “cross-partisanship”.  But this strikes me as sort of interesting, because it suggests vague  rumblings for political party breakdown, what with a Republican Party garnering 20 percent of the electorate, a Democratic Congress with low low approval ratings themselves, and a Democratic President playing a bit too much footsy with marginal Republican Senators.

To which I have the question — how many Sarah Palins and Ron Pauls would it take for a Congressional breakdown like that following the 1854 Congressional Elections?

The 1854 election was the beginning of the end for both the Democratic and Whig Parties. Party lines were very blurred and a minority government was formed. Democrats lost a huge number of seats in the North due to the impending slavery crisis, but remained the largest party in the House. The American Party (commonly known as the “Know-Nothings”), a faction based on the fears of immigration and Catholicism which had won several seats in previous elections, became the second largest group. The large influx of immigrants from Catholic Ireland, escaping the potato famine, and from Catholic Southern Germany, departing due to political and economic instability, shocked many American Protestants and allowed the American Party to grow. The Whigs, divided over the issue of slavery, lost several seats and began to disintegrate. Meanwhile, the newly-formed Republican Party, which was anti-slavery and pro-industry, quickly became a force in the North. In the end, the Democrats and a large number of American Party representatives allied to become the largest faction, although they still did not hold a majority.

That took the two dominant parties not getting anything done, and becoming politically thought of as merely doling out patronage to themselves, ignoring the vital issues of the day and hemming and hawing about the future of Slavery.  The best we can do in the past several decades (post 1968 and the Wallacites) to disrupt two-partyand baffled the currents of 2 political party harmony is to insert Ross Perot into a presidential election.