Sort of random question (snarky answers OK too)

[tameszu]

Anyone know why Republicans are elephants and Democrats are donkeys?

I feel like I should know this.

P.S.: Snarky answers are only OK if they don't make fun of me!

[JI7]

1. some political cartoon i think

i think it begin with some political cartoon. not sure though. i'm sure someone else knows for sure.

[charlie]

2. Straight from the... erm, horses' mouths

http://www.democrats.org/about/donkey.html
http://www.rnc.org/2000/elephant

[Booberdawg]

3. Origin of the Donkey

The elephant link didn't work for me.

Here's a snip in the Donkey:

<snip>
When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, his opponents tried to label him a "jackass" for his populist views and his slogan, "Let the people rule." Jackson, however, picked up on their name calling and turned it to his own advantage by using the donkey on his campaign posters. During his presidency, the donkey was used to represent Jackson's stubbornness when he vetoed re-chartering the National Bank.

The first time the donkey was used in a political cartoon to represent the Democratic party, it was again in conjunction with Jackson. Although in 1837 Jackson was retired, he still thought of himself as the Party's leader and was shown trying to get the donkey to go where he wanted it to go. The cartoon was titled "A Modern Baalim and his Ass."

Interestingly enough, the person credited with getting the donkey widely accepted as the Democratic party's symbol probably had no knowledge of the prior associations. Thomas Nast, a famous political cartoonist, came to the United States with his parents in 1840 when he was six. He first used the donkey in an 1870 Harper's Weekly cartoon to represent the "Copperhead Press" kicking a dead lion, symbolizing Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had recently died. Nast intended the donkey to represent an anti-war faction with whom he disagreed, but the symbol caught the public's fancy and the cartoonist continued using it to indicate some Democratic editors and newspapers.

[charlie]

4. I've gotta confess

I didn't check out the RNC link myself, because for going on two years now I've been unable to connect to the RNC site -- it's not in the DNS servers accessible from where I am in Japan. Here's a Google cache copy:

Google Cache

[tameszu]

5. Thanks!

Now I know...I had a suspicion that it would be something 19th century and sepia stained like that...

[Paschall]

6. Thomas Nast

Also gave us the most common images of Santa Claus (Europeans depict Saint Nicholas much differently).



Thomas Nast