Tea Party Democrats of 1890

In searching for a good link to embed in my previous post to explain the Sixth Party System of US Politics to any curious readers whoed seen it referenced there, I ran across this brief, interesting article about the Classical Liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which elected one of their own to the White House in 1884 and 1892.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_Democrats

Though Democrats, their political views are very similar to orthodox Tea Partiers in many respects--notably the insistence on Laissez Faire capitalism (i.e. near-religious support of free markets), opposition to subsidies, and adherence to an outdated and damaging gold standard for money. The Bourbons were criticized as old and outdated even at the time, and hadn't the populist tone of the Tea Party (the Populists were their enemies, actually), but the policy ideas were much the same (and the failure of those ideas to address a major economic crisis, the Panic of 1893, led to a huge electoral repudiation in 1894, and their loss of control over the Democratic Party in 1896 to their populist rivals, who proceeded to eke out a narrow loss to the more moderate 'pro-business' Republicans in that year's election, the first funded (on the Republican side, at least) and organized in the 21st century manner, i.e. primarily by rich industrial interests (in a reaction to this, most parts and periods of the 20th century included substantial campaign finance limits that checked that influence, checks which have now been removed by a Conservative US Supreme Court on flimsy constitutional grounds in 'Citizens United,' already much to the detriment of our national governance)

But, yeah, the Bourbon Democrats are worth four minutes of your time, particularly the header section. They didn't last long in power, as the nation was not amused when President Cleveland refused on principle to use the Federal Government to help the nation through national disasters (i.e. vetoing a bill to fund the purchase of new seed corn for next year's crop, the previous year's corn having been almost completely destroyed).