Happy BIRTHDAY, Q Tree!

YES!
Blade does have a great mind. I saved several of his comments. This is one of my favorites:

Blade says:
September 11, 2018 at 4:37 am

Technically there is a line of succession of the Democratic Party going back to Jefferson. But some would say the Republican share the same line. The Antebellum parties coalitions were totally different. Urban areas were controlled by Whigs(ancestors to Republicans) and rural area were controlled by Democrats.

Technically there is no such thing. There are a lot of low-fo history books that manufactured that myth, and of course the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, both of which were feeble attempts of stolen valor to whitewash the corrupt modern, post-civil war (D)emocrat party by painting it with the iconoclastic flavor of .Jefferson and Jackson. Of course these days the (D) party is running away from both as fast as possible. And to this I say – excellent. Jackson did found the (D) party, but he would shoot any modern (D)emocrat you can name if he were alive today. Of that I am sure.
If there is a spiritual ancestor for the modern (D)emocrat party it is the (F)ederalists of 1790-1800 ( and then a few more years as they struggled in minority status. There is no direct connection, just spiritual as the Federalists ( Adams, Hamilton, Marshall, etc ) were the party of big government, high taxes, urban cities, pro-Europe ( which means England of course as France were now considered the deplorables since their revolution ), and FedGov superiority as illustrated by the Whiskey Rebellion putdown. But most importantly, using FedGov power to harm the opposition “party” was practically invented by the Federalists with the Alien and Sedition Acts which ignited the Republican “party” opposition into a juggernaut that decimated them in 1800 and beyond. This was a 2nd American Revolution and few are even aware of it.
“Party” is a stretch of a word during the first party era though. Things were mostly handled in Congress in caucuses that drew their support from the people who elected them. They picked the Presidential “candidates” and of course set the agenda. As they began to work in a bubble ( NB: while still in New York, and then Philadelphia ) and paid less concern to their actual voters, the caucuses lost power being less representative. Hence the Jeffersonians began the Republican “party” ( that’s correct, not a typo ) to counter the unrestrained Hamilton and then Adams and their sycophants. [ NB: this is where the history books start to go wrong, painting George Washington as a “Federalist” while he was really the decider-in-chief, like Trump, for a cabinet of people of differing ideas. His bias towards his nearly favorite-son Hamilton meant he often revailed much to chagrin of Jefferson who tried to resign multiple times but was convinced to stay. ]
The “Jeffersonians” as their faction was often called, Jefferson and Madison the founders, were actually Republicans in most literature including their own writings. A few times they were referred to as Democratic-Republicans as well and this kind of stuck and has become a retroactive official title for the Jefferson/Madison/Monroe administrations and all those Congresses they won from 1800 onward. Connecting this to Andrew Jackson is a mistake though. There is no connection between (DR) and (D) whatsoever. In the first election where the Congressional party caucuses lost central power to local state-based meetings and conventions, 1824, all four candidates claimed (DR) affiliation ( and why wouldn’t you since the past 24 years they were the only real functioning party ) but the reality is that they all were No-Party since there was no Congressional caucus selection and the contemporaneous reporting of 1824 ( John Quincy Adams losing both popular and electoral vote to Andrew Jackson yet still winning in the House runoff ) shows either No-Party for all, or (DR) for all. Saying that Jackson was the (DR) though is wildly off the mark.
The “first party” system died that year when House Speaker Henry Clay ( loosely analogous to Paul Ryan IMHO ) made a “corrupt bargain” and got Adams the presidency and then became his Secretary Of State ( back then SoS was heir apparent to the President ). This enraged Jackson who allied with his northern counterpart Martin Van Buren to form the modern (D)emocrat party. However, there are really no Jacksonians beyond James K. Polk, just lame duck pro-Slavery Democrats who couldn’t care less about Jacksonian issues, and post-civil war at the turn of the next century the party is 100% anti-Jacksonian, “progressive”, socialist, globalist, segregationist, and pretty much Communist without the title.
Making the connection between Jefferson/Madison/Monroe to Jackson is also incorrect because they did not really like each other personally. Jackson was seen as a deplorable even by the previous deplorable Republicans who were now the status quo in the now-Washington DC based federal government. They tolerated him, employed him, but did not want him in town. Since they did not really campaign in those days, and the fact that Jefferson and Adams had died, we’ll never know what they would have done in the 1828 election when Jackson came back and crushed Adams and his cabal gaining his revenge. IMHO, there is no party of the first party era, or the next era prior to the civil war that survives today. And any of them who were resurrected today would be mortified to what has transpired and would lead the next revolutionary reset. But one thing is for sure, Jefferson was not a (D)emocrat, the term was never ever used by them ( seriously, it was “Republican” ), and his Democratic-Republican party was primarily based on a weak federal government with States-Rights as its cornerstone, low taxes, pro-Agrarian, and with as few ties to the old country of England and its empire ( globalism of that era ) as possible. They were in truth the opposite of modern (D)emocrats and increasingly modern (R)INOs too. There are definite similarities between iconoclastic forces-of-nature, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Polk, Lincoln, Teddy, Truman, Reagan, Trump, but these things transcend party labels completely.

I really do miss Blade!
I first ran across him when he commented on ‘Climate Denier’ sites and was very happy to see him turn up at CTH.