Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1885 — The Ohio Result and the Administration. [ARTICLE]

The Ohio Result and the Administration.

From two classes comes the claim that the result in Ohio is a rebuke of President Cleveland and his administration. One class is made up of the Blaine Republicans, who have not yet recovered from the bitterness of defeat, and are anxiously casting about for such crumbs of comfort as can be extracted from political events. The other class is composed of the Democrats who regard the president’s administration as a failure because he has not replaced every Republican in office with a Democrat. For this neglect it is claimed the Ohio Democracy has rebuked him by not supporting the party ticket. The claim is absurd. There is slight ground, if any, for a claim that the Ohio result lias any bearing whatever upon the President or his administration. The election was about as distinctly a State election, and about as free from any complication with national issues, as any that was ever hold in Ohio or elsewhere. The State is Republican and the Rejiublicans carried it. They may have been aroused by Sherman’s appeal to passion. They probably were to some extent; and to that extent national considerations entered into the canvass and affected the result. But nobody will be foolish enough to claim that revived fanaticism on the subject of the Southern vote means approval'or disapproval of the President. If the Southern Republican does not get his rights at the bal-lot-box, as John Sherman so vociferously and dogmatically declares, it is not due in any sense to the administration now in power. If it is chargeable to any administration it is to that of President Arthur and his Republican predecessors; for it was under them that all the alleged outrages which grieve the sensitive soul of Sherman occurred. So far as the Republican claimants are concerned, this claim that the Ohio result bears upon President Cleveland is as unimportant as it is untrue. In the case of the Democratic claimants it is fortunate the claim is untrue. For if the Democratic defeat in Ohio does mean anything special in connection with the administration it means approval and not rebuke. Whatever else may be said, either for or against the Democratic candidates and leaders in Tuesday’s contest, this is true beyond question. They represent unequivocally what there was in the Ohio Democracy of opposition to the reform principles of Cleveland and his administration. If the Ohio Democracy had proposed any rebuke for the President the effective way to administer it would have been to elect the men who shelved Pendleton for his reform record, not to permit their defeat. —Detroit Free Press.