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Jan 14, 2020 · Like most, if not all, political parties around the world, the Republican Party has a party symbol which is associated with its ideologies and beliefs. The party’s traditional symbol is an elephant. However, an alternate symbol for the party in states such as New York, Indiana, and Ohio is the bald eagle while log cabin is used in Kentucky.
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Why the elephant and the donkey?
The Democratic Party’s donkey and the Republican Party’s elephant have been on the political scene since the 19th century. The origins of the Democratic donkey can be traced to the 1828 presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson. During that race, opponents of Jackson called him a jackass. However, rather than rejecting the label, Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812 who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, was amused by it and included an image of the animal in his campaign posters. Jackson went on to defeat incumbent John Quincy Adams and serve as America’s first Democratic president. In the 1870s, influential political cartoonist Thomas Nast helped popularize the donkey as a symbol for the entire Democratic Party.
America 101: Why a Donkey for Democrats?
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 and six years later Abraham Lincoln became its first member elected to the White House. An image of an elephant was featured as a Republican symbol in at least one political cartoon and a newspaper illustration during the Civil War (when “seeing the elephant” was an expression used by soldiers to mean experiencing combat), but the pachyderm didn’t start to take hold as a GOP symbol until Thomas Nast, who’s considered the father of the modern political cartoon, used it in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon.
Titled “The Third-Term Panic,” Nast’s drawing mocked the New York Herald, which had been critical of President Ulysses Grant’s rumored bid for a third term, and portrayed various interest groups as animals, including an elephant labeled “the Republican vote,” which was shown standing at the edge of a pit. Nast employed the elephant to represent Republicans in additional cartoons during the 1870s, and by 1880 other cartoonists were using the creature to symbolize the party.
America 101: Why an Elephant for Republicans?
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- Elizabeth Nix
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Nov 3, 2020 · To date, the elephant remains the official symbol of the Republican Party, and although the Democrats have yet to declare their own, you wouldn’t need to walk more than a couple paces at one...
- 3 min
What is the Republican Party symbol? The Republican Party symbol, to most people, will always be the red, white, and blue elephant. Through the meaning behind this icon has been argued for decades, the true impact of the symbol will often depend on the political leaning of the person you’re speaking too.
Sep 21, 2020 · September 21, 2020. While the bald eagle is a national symbol for the United States, the two major political parties that govern it are often represented by two different animals: a donkey for the Democratic Party and an elephant for the Republican Party.
Oct 23, 2012 · Like Andrew Jackson, the Republican party would eventually embrace the caricature, adopting the elephant as their official symbol. The Democrats, however, never officially adopted the donkey as a...
