Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1908 — A HOPELESS NOMINATION [ARTICLE]

A HOPELESS NOMINATION

What the Last Democratic Nominee for Governor of New York Has to Say of Bryan. From the New York American.— Dem. For the third time W. J. Bryan has been nominated by the Democratic party—or rather by that fragment of former efficiency which is called the Democratic party. We have lost confidence in the Democratic party, as millions of other democrats have done. We can not see in this nomination any hope. We are bound to add, with regret, that we have lost confidence in W. J. Bryan, who, by well-manipulated bossship, has compelled this nomination. It is a fact that the people of the country have absolutely nothing to say in regard to the nomination or the platform. The platform adopted by the Democratic party is nothing but a compromise between the absolute will of Bryan and that willingness on Bryan’s part to dicker with his own principles recently made known to the public. No reliance can be placed on the Democratic platform or *on Bryan’s declarations. The democratic platform declares for one set of principles at one-election and for an entirely different set at the next election, while Bryan is apparently without permanent principle or sincere conviction or even honest attitudp. *A*platform is a promise to perform; and a platform made by the Democratic party and indorsed by Mr. Bryan is not worth the paper it is written on. The democratic party has become a w atl er cock of what its inferior leaders imagine to be the expression of public opinion. It reflects supinely the corporation instinct and 'servility of a Parker and is ready at the next moment to reflect the half-baked illmatured opinions of some Imaginary radical. The Democracy of Bryan and Taggart and others, with its changing principles, its shifting platform and its chameleon candidates, is not the Democracy of Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, who lived by his principles and stood by them.