Moses, The Bush is Burning!

[A Black Falcon]

Two parties. Democratic-Republicans and Federalists, Democrats and Whigs, then the nation seperated and there were a bunch of parties, then the Democrats and Republicans until now. :)

Illusion, if you want to talk about hateful politics... the period in the 1850s is one of the worst ever. Remember, the end result was secession and the Civil War, but things got bad well before that politically... the Whigs collapsed by the late 1850s, torn apart by sectionalism. There were a whole lot of factions, with the parties split between north and south... the 1860 was essentially two seperate elections (with different competitors in each part) in the North and the South, for instance.

Except a couple of more successful third-party movements, like the Populists of the late 1800s.

Oh, and how exactly were they so much smarter? I don't see it. ... but I was just reading a book about the Civil War... Oh, Bush is stupid, but is appeasement so much better? Oh, sure, I can see why -- they wanted to make sure to keep the nation together -- but the South would be happy with nothing less than absolute gaurantees of slavery and national policy to take over parts of Latin America to expand slaveholding territories...