Political Parties
This is what George Washington said in letter written to Timothy Pickering and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Political parties are not mentioned in the constitution simply because the founding father didn’t like them they thought that they would lead to failure of a republican form of government, the founding fathers also thought that political parties would lead to the minority not having a voice in government, and in my opinion the main reason the framers didn’t like political parties is because they would eliminate civic virtue in politics, FEC VS Davis is a court case that involves political parties and a lack of civic virtue.
In 2008 Jack Davis a wealthy democratic candidate saying that the Millionaire’s Amendment violates the first amendment(The millionaires Amendment Law passed in 2002 that increases contribution limits for candidates who face opponents who put substantial sums of their personal funds into their own campaigns) he also says it violates the 5th amendment. Does the millionaire amendment violate free speech of the First Amendment and the equal protection principle (part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.
)? The court said that he was wrong in cases, the 1st amendment and 5th amendment. As usually it is all about trying to win try to find any loophole and change it to your advantage so you can make more money or win and then make more money. The Federal Election Act of 1971 made so that a group or individual can only give 25,000 dollars to federal campaigns per year. Congress did this after the Watergate scandal were party members broke into a hotel and tried to steal information on the democratic party’s presidential candidate, they put in place to try to eliminate corrupt in elections and it is the FECs job to enforce these laws. On January 2, 1975 Senator James Buckley went against Francis Valeo the defendant for the FEC.
Senator Buckley went to court on these ideas that limiting the amount of money that a person or group can give a campaign violates the first amendment. The court agreed 7 to 1 in favor of Senator Buckley because, that by limiting the amount of money a person can contribute doesn’t help stop fraud in elections, but if the court had thought that limiting the amount of money person can contribute would have actually worked they would have voted in Francis Valeo favor. By the court ruling in James Buckley’s favor it allows individual people or groups to give campaigns as much money as they want making running for office, a way to make money, not to place the best person in office and the people who give these candidates money will influence the person on certain things and if the person refuses he will lose this persons support and others support because they didn’t do what they wanted him to do even if what he did was for the betterment of the country. The first political parties in the United States were the, federalist and the anti- federalist’s the poorer farmer anti-federalists supported the articles of confederation while the federalist’s who were wealthy well educated people didn’t support the articles of confederation. Political parties developed so that people with similar views could come together and be united.
They would all vote for one person with similar ideas as theirs and that would increase the likelihood that, that person would be elected. Political parties have their negatives and positives, but they aren’t useful except for one thing and that is that, you can’t ban political parties because people will always want to be with the people that think like they do. There is no solution for political parties in Democracy except taking away the peoples liberty. That would defeat the purpose of a democracy or you could attempt to control its effects but you would never control a big amount or an amount that would have any real effect, it’s something that you’re going to have to live with. I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.
~W.C. Fields
