plus ça change plus c'est la même chose: the more thing changes, the more it remains the same.
More than a century ago, 1892 to be exact, Democrat Grover Cleveland was re-elected to replace the outgoing "businessman" president (have we heard that before? businessman candidate) Benjamin Harrison.
dramatic Democratic victory prompted Republicans to sabotage the economy in order to ruin the incoming administration.
By Heather Cox Richardson
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-09/when-republicans-deliberately-sowed-a-financial-crisis.html
Hm.. I didn't know obstructionism has such a long tradition for the GOP.
A synopsis of the article: Republicans then, as now, were beholden to big business interest - or by the lexicons of that era, the robber barons like Andrew Carnegie and J.D. Rockefeller. (Sounds familiar?).
The GOP then proceeded to collude with big business who set out to punish the public, consisted of “socialists and anarchists,” who voted for the Democrats. They enabled conditions (take their money home) leading to fiscal crisis with the collapse of the stock market. The outgoing Republican administration
"announced that the Republicans were only responsible for the nation’s finances until March 4, Inauguration Day. All they had to do was “avert a catastrophe” until then. "
Thus, they successfully created a gigantic mess for the incoming Grover Cleveland, and conveniently blamed on the Democrats for failure. They were successful fooling the voters to return them to power at midterm election.
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There are lessons to be learned here. Hope President Obama and the Democrat stand tough this time.
3 replies
Interesting historical article: When Republicans Deliberately Sowed a Financial Crisis (1892) (Original post)
valerief (35,681 posts) 
