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Ex-GOP candidate says ‘pure democracy not the way to run a country’ (www.msn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by DevCat@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml

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Former Republican Pennsylvania Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum has said that Ohio’s vote to back abortion rights and marijuana legalisation shows that “pure democracies are not the way to run a country”.

The rightwing commentator, who was booted from CNN after making disparaging comments about Native Americans, appeared on the far-right network Newsmax on Tuesday night to take part in its election coverage.

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[–] Narrrz@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

was the republican party's opponent called the democratic party back then? I thought they had other opposition, which was how they managed to be the left leaning party of the time.

[–] DreamerofDays@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

It was the Democratic Party, but it also kinda wasn’t. Particularly around the Civil War politics were, not surprisingly, rather fractious.

In the 1860 election, the last before the outbreak of the war, four candidates won electoral votes. The Democratic Party splintered a bit, with two of the candidates coming from it(one who sought a form of compromise over slavery, and one who was a pro-slavery hardliner).

I’m not sure how useful in practice “left” or “right” leanings are for discussing the parties back then in relation to now… that’s something I’ll leave to people who study this stuff more intently.

But there have been other parties in the mix in the US, and there was one that scored electoral votes in that election. This was also just after the dissolution of the Whig Party(which had been the party of four or so presidents).