The more things change..................

................the more they stay the same.  The year was 1885:

     Ohio's political parity rendered it imperative that each party consolidate its base, meaning minority segments with splinter-issue passions had to be accommodated.  Republicans needed to assuage the temperance movement so it wouldn't split off into a one-issue party and undermine Republican prospects.  But that meant fewer Democrats could be lured to the GOP in close elections.  Democrats had to conciliate populist dissidents demanding soft-money policies to aid debtors and slam elites.  That means, likewise, that few Republicans would rally to the Democrats.  The result was a precarious political environment for politicians of both parties.  McKinley's mercurial Seventeenth District was a case in point.

-Robert W. Merry, President McKinley:  Architect of the American Century