Caucus

“ Rather than imprudently expose to the world the differences of opinion threatened or developed among its members, each party hastens to remove disrupting debate from the floor of Congress, where the speakers might too hastily commit themselves to insubordination, to quiet conferences behind closed doors, where frightened scruples may be reassured and every disagreement healed with a salve of compromise or subdued with the whip of political expediency. The caucus is the drilling-ground of the party. ”

“ Is not a government office everywhere synonymous with incapacity and sloth? What a miserable position is that of a Member of Parliament, compelled to give his vote on innumerable questions of which he does not understand the rudiments, and giving it at the dictation of party chiefs who themselves are controlled by the blind and brainless mechanism of the caucus! ”

“ The members of Congress being the only national assembly of persons in the country, and being the chosen political leaders from the different Commonwealths, naturally glided into the habit of constituting themselves, in caucus, the connecting link between the electoral colleges in the several Commonwealths, and thus the Congressional caucus, or caucuses, as the case might be, became the nominating body or bodies to the electoral colleges. ”

“ Indeed, if there must be an intermediate body between the people and the election, unknown to the constitution, it may be well questioned whether a better than the old plan of a congressional caucus can be devised. ”

“ The more daring boys went so far as to discuss among themselves, in caucus secrecy, the great time they could have if, by some means, they could wind a cord around the judge’s spindle-legs, and on up to his mighty waist, and then, by some device, jerk the cord and send him into revolutions. ”

“ It is doubtful whether in any other nation, with a shorter inheritance of political instinct, parties could long successfully resist the centrifugal forces of the committee system with only the varying attraction of the caucus to detain them. The wonder is that, despite the forcible and unnatural divorcement of legislation and administration and the consequent distraction of legislation from all attention to anything like an intelligent planning and superintendence of policy, we are not cursed with as many factions as now almost hopelessly confuse French politics. ”

“ The Agricultural Bureau, the Post Office Department, every one of the great executive functions of the Government is threatened, taken by the throat, highwayman-style, collared on the highway, commanded to stand and deliver in the name of the democratic congressional caucus. That is what it is; simply that. No committee of this Congress in either branch has ever recommended 3175that legislation—not one. Simply a democratic caucus has done it.
Of course this is new. We are learning something every day. I think you may search the records of the Federal Government in vain ”

“ That the affairs of the nation are entirely given over to be disputed between the two organised parties, whose leaders are compelled, in shaping their policy and in thinking about public affairs, to consider first and foremost the probable effect of what they will do and of what they will say upon the active members of the caucus of their own party in the constituencies. The frame of mind of the members of the caucus is that of men who regard the opposite caucus as the adversary. ”

“ They vote for the ticket made by "the caucus," and the caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged. Caucuses, or their equivalent, would be far worse here in constituency-making than there in President-making, because on great occasions the American nation can fix on some one great man whom it knows, but the English nation could not fix on 658 great men and choose them. ”

“ A caucus is the meeting of the members of one party in private, for the discussion of the attitude and line of policy which members of that party are to take on questions which are expected to arise in the legislative halls. Thus, in Senate caucus, is decided who shall be members of the various committees. In these meetings is frequently discussed whether or not the whole party shall vote for or against this or that important bill, and thus its fate is decided before it has even come up for debate in Congress. ”

“ Congress, in truth, is now little more than a place for formally ratifying and recording the decisions at which the party having the majority has arrived in caucus, where the only real deliberation takes place. As the minority in caucus is bound by party law to vote with the majority in the legislative hall, it often happens that a small minority of the whole Legislature passes a law or carries an election. Take away party, and we see that the whole of the present system of parliamentary government would crumble. ”

“ The caucus cannot always silence or subdue a large and influential minority of dissentients, but its whip seldom fails to reduce individual malcontents and mutineers into submission. There is no place in congressional jousts for the free lance. ”

“ The separation between the organization and the party, between those who nominate and those who elect, is the sum of the evils of the too highly organized caucus system. It has its roots in the notion that the majority is right, because it is the majority, which is the popular view thus expressed by Hammond: ‘I think that when political friends consent to go into caucus for the nomination of officers, every member of such caucus is bound in honor to support and carry into effect its determination. ”

“ It was a very logical mode of party government, that of nominating the chief magistrate by congressional caucus, but it was not an open enough way. The French chamber does not select premiers by shutting up the members of its majority in caucus. Neither does the House of Commons. Their selection is made by long and open trial, in debate and in business management, of the men in whom they discover most tact for leading and most skill for planning, as well as most power for ruling. ”

“ No party, as I have often told you, and as I stated at the caucus at Marache’s, can last unless founded on pure principles; and the minute a party begins to intrigue within itself is the minute when the seed of division is sown and its purity begins to decline. ”

“ Forty-two Senators rule the Senate; twenty-three Senators rule the caucus. A majority rules the Senate; a caucus rules the majority; and the twenty-three southern Senators rule the caucus. The same thing, in the same way, governed by the same elements, is true in the House.
This present assault upon the purity and fairness of elections, upon the Constitution, upon the executive department, and upon the rights of the people ”

“ The man who disobeys his party caucus is understood to disavow his party allegiance altogether, and to assume that dangerous neutrality which is so apt to degenerate into mere caprice, and which is almost sure to destroy his influence by bringing him under the suspicion of being unreliable,—a suspicion always conclusively damning in practical life. ”

“ Its independence of traditions and its refusal to be led by anybody added to the picturesqueness of the assembly. Nothing could be thrust down its throat. It threw all the men who successively tried to lead it. It voted with reference to an order of ideas and aspirations which no one can find written down in the press of the denomination. We believe there was but a single caucus, and that was a gathering of the colored delegates. It was a piece of most adroit management. ”

“ The tendency inherent in party government to supersede the national legislature by the party caucus has long been completely developed in the United States, where it may be said that in ordinary times the only real debates are those held in caucus, congressional legislation being simply a registration of the caucus decision, for which all members of the party, whether they agreed or dissented in the caucus, feel bound by party allegiance to record their votes in the House ”

“ That the silvern speech spent in caucus secures the golden silence maintained on the floor of Congress, making each party rich in concord and happy in coöperation.
The fact that makes this defense of the caucus not altogether conclusive is that it is shielded from all responsibility by its sneaking privacy. It has great power without any balancing weight of accountability. ”

“ About one-fourth of the counties sent regularly chosen delegates; the rest were volunteers. In spirit and enthusiasm it was rather a mass-meeting than a convention; but every man present was in some sort a leader in his own locality. The assemblage was much more representative than similar bodies gathered by the ordinary caucus machinery. It was an earnest and determined council of five or six hundred cool, sagacious, independent thinkers, called together by a great public exigency, led and directed by the first minds of the State. ”

“ The usual purpose of a caucus is to nominate candidates for offices within the gift of the legislative body, or to consider questions of legislation. A caucus elects a chairman and other officers, but rarely if ever adopts a platform of principles. The great political parties of the country have caucuses in each branch of Congress, and usually in the legislatures of the several States. ”

“ We may be ready to smile at men, holding professedly the position of members of a Council, who durst not rise in their places and insist on having liberty to propose what their consciences dictated; and who, when refused that liberty, instead of declining to take part in the mock Council, went into a caucus, and drew up a petition to the autocrat who had snatched away their rights. ”

“ The Caucus may be perhaps a name of evil sound and omen in the ears of the aristocratic or privileged classes, but it is undeniably the only form of political organisation which can collect, guide and control for common objects large masses of electors; and there is nothing in this particular form of political combination which is in the least repugnant to the working classes in this country. ”

“ Crewe's chivalrous spirit resented it.
"What we call a caucus in the towns of this State," he said, "is a meeting of citizens of one party to determine who their candidates shall be. A caucus is a primary. There is a very loose primary law in this State, purposely kept loose by the politicians of the Northeastern Railroads, in order that they may play such tricks on decent men as they have been playing on me."
At this mention of the Northeastern Railroads the lady on Mr. Crewe's right, and some other guests, gave startled glances at Victoria. ”

“ With the exception of a single instance, susceptible of easy explanation, the Republican, now Democratic party, whenever it has been wise enough to employ the caucus or convention system, and to use in good faith the influence it is capable of imparting to the popular cause, has been successful, and it has been defeated whenever that system has been laid [6] aside or employed unfairly. With the Federal party and its successors the results have been widely different; with or without the caucus system they have generally found no difficulty in uniting whenever union promised success. ”

“ We have arrived at what is the most significant event of this session of the caucus, if not of the entire gathering. The caucus has already shown its spirit in ousting the Soldiers and Sailors Council because, in its opinion, it could not measure up to one hundred per cent. Americanism, and now we shall see what the same simon-pure brand of red, white, and blueism is demanded of the second largest city in the United States. ”

“ It is designed to supply the cohesive principle which the multiplicity and mutual independence of the Committees so powerfully tend to destroy. Having no Prime Minister to confer with about the policy of the government, as they see members of parliament doing, our congressmen confer with each other in caucus. ”

“ It was to this supposed imitation of the American political “machine” that Lord Beaconsfield gave the name “caucus,” and the name came to be used, not in the American sense of a meeting, but of a closely disciplined system of party organization, chiefly used as a stock term of abuse applied by opponents to each other’s party machinery. ”

“ Here the people always have a part in the caucus, in the primary or the town meeting, in the election of local officers and representatives for higher offices, in the opportunity to exercise their will and raise their voice in the affairs of the nation. ”

“ Important measures, moreover, are often discussed in a caucus of the majority party, and the action of the caucus is considered binding on all who attend it. A member in either chamber, especially a new member, who displays a disposition to be wholly independent, and to disregard the advice of his party leaders or the decisions of his party caucus is not likely to get many favors for himself or for his district. ”

“ One of those bold and adventurous spirits, who know so well how to control a caucus, he possessed a commanding presence, and when "button-holing" a man would produce convincing arguments that the cause espoused by him was apparently right. He always rallied the "boys" at a caucus, and when unable to win by the preferable method of moral suasion, was abundantly able to resort to bulldozing or "solid" methods. [Pg 20] Just the man to take care of Senator Hamblin's interest, he was a standing delegate to all conventions where he could be of service to his chief. ”

“ With the development of parties, and the rule of majorities, the caucus or some equivalent has become an indispensable adjunct to party government, and it may now be defined as a meeting of the majority of the electors belonging to the same party in any political or legislative body held preliminary to a meeting thereof, for the purpose of selecting candidates to be voted for, or for the purpose of determining the course of the party at the meeting of the whole body. ”