Political caucus

“ No candidate can obtain a hearing, no grievance however crying has a chance of redress, unless pushed by a properly constituted authority.
Individual votes then are captured and controlled by political associations. The sweet simplicity of "one man one vote" is engulfed in the whirlpools of the party caucus. The millions of voters become mere pawns in a game controlled by complex forces in which political ambition, intellect, wealth, and persuasive eloquence play leading roles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a strong belief among the inventors of the caucus that by means of this plan they would secure the predominance of the advanced Radical party. The old privileges of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for nothing in the councils of Liberalism. Every man was to have a vote, not merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to select candidates, manage local political affairs, and generally determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the constituency. ”

“ In a district like mine where nomination is equivalent to election, the right to participate in the proceedings of a caucus is more important than the right to vote. The popular understanding of the order has made the holding of a local Federal office a badge of political disability. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The nominating caucus is composed of men who work for pay, and put in nomination the political aspirants corrupt enough to purchase their positions. The more decent class of our citizens avoid the primaries. They well know that to control them means a corrupt use of money, or a fight wherein victory is as fatal as defeat. In the rural districts the farmer is called to leave his plough and ride from one to three miles, and lose a day's work, for the privilege of being controlled by a small political bunco-steerer to the support of some aspirant to office who has the fellow in his pay. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One would suppose from these remarks that the male American citizen spends his days chiefly at caucuses; whereas, as we all know when we reflect, he goes perhaps twice a year, if he be [263] a punctilious patriot like Julius Cæsar, and if not, probably does not go at all. If the consciousness that his wife could vote at a caucus would act as a spur to the masculine political conscience, the male American citizen could well afford to dine at a restaurant on election-days, or to cook his own food now and then. ”

“ The Federal party were on both occasions incapable of successfully resisting a candidate in whose favor the Republicans were united, and they were on each sufficiently strong to control the election when the support of their opponents was divided amongst several. Mr. Monroe and a majority of his cabinet were unfortunately influenced by different views, and pursued a course well designed to weaken the influence of the caucus system, and to cause its abandonment. ”

“ The disappointed friends of Monroe and Clinton charged that the caucus was irregular, only eighty-nine out of one hundred and thirty-nine Republican representatives and senators having attended it, and could they have agreed upon a candidate among themselves Madison must have been beaten. Leading Federalists waited until late in April for DeWitt Clinton to make some arrangement which their party might support, but, while Federalists waited, the threatened Republican bolt wasted itself in a fruitless endeavour to unite upon a candidate for first place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 line of argument is about as lucid as if one reasoned that because one can break a window with a stone it is no use buying a telescope. And it remains entirely a matter for speculation whether my member is arguing that a caucus can rig an election carried on under the Proportional Representation system or that it cannot. ”

“ Our parties marshal their adherents with the strictest possible discipline for the purpose of carrying elections, but their discipline is very slack and indefinite in dealing with legislation. At least there is within Congress no visible, and therefore no controllable party organization. The only bond of cohesion is the caucus, which occasionally whips a party together for coöperative action against the time for casting its vote upon some critical question. There is always a majority and a minority, indeed, but the legislation of a session does not represent the policy of either ”

“ 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. ”

“ Any individual, or any minority of weak numbers or small influence, who has the temerity to neglect the decisions of the caucus is sure, if the offense be often repeated, or even once committed upon an important issue, to be read out of the party, almost without chance of reinstatement. And every one knows that nothing can be accomplished in politics by mere disagreement. The only privilege such recalcitrants gain is the privilege of disagreement; they are forever shut out from the privilege of confidential coöperation. They have chosen the helplessness of a faction. ”

“ The secret of the power of caucus and convention is, general want of time on the part of the community. Your honest and shrewd Western farmer, not having himself the leisure to select his candidate, is fain to let caucus or convention choose for him. In practice, however, the evil is far from great: the party caucus, for its own interest, will, on the whole, select the fittest candidate available, and, in any case, dares not, except perhaps in New York City, fix its choice upon a man of known bad character. ”

“ To try your chance in a caucus, and then, because your wishes are not gratified, to attempt to defeat the result of the deliberation of your friends, strikes me as a palpable violation of honor and good faith. You caucus for no other possible purpose than under the implied argument that the opinion and wishes of the minority shall be yielded to the opinions of the majority, and the sole object of caucusing is to ascertain what is the will of the majority. ”

“ Humiliating as it may be to our patriotic pride, every candid person knows it to be a fact that an election under our representative system, with its inevitable caucus and convention machinery, is simply a winnowing out of superior men and the choice of the worst to take the offices of state. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ By what right do you or any other man, president or not, arrogate to yourself the power to hold this secret caucus, resting your country’s stand in this grave affair entirely upon the judgment of one or two men? ”

“ 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! ”

“ But the multiplicity of ordinal preferences, second, third, fourth, fifth, up to tenth, which the single transferable vote system would involve, will require a more scientific handling in party interests, and neither party will be able to face an election with any hope of success without the assistance of the most drastic form of caucus and without its orders being carried out by the electors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The active busybody, who had little business of his own to attend to, or to whom the position of member of a local committee was one to be striven after for the sake of the dignity attaching to it, became the ruling spirit of the caucus. In thousands of cases the older and more sober Liberals were driven out of the councils of their party in disgust, and more and more the extreme men, who were fighting in earnest for some special object or fad, became the predominant powers in Liberalism. This was the change that was gradually wrought in the Liberal party between 1875 and 1885. ”

“ If the majority is to define the policy of a party, there must be some method within each party of ascertaining the mind of the majority, and settling the party programme, before it meets the opposing party at the polls. The Carlton and Reform clubs discharge for the Tories and Liberals many of the functions of a congressional caucus. ”