Does the Grand Old Party need a facelift?
We associate an elephant with Republicans and a donkey with Democrats because of Thomas Nast, America's first great political cartoonist, who depicted politics as a circus.
Nast was a Republican, but he portrayed the Republican Party as a well-meaning but bloated and cumbersome elephant. The Democratic Party was a braying donkey.
Consider this cartoon, where the elephant and the donkey are at the edge of a financial cliff. The elephant can't be bothered to care about the danger ("Let Well Enough Alone") and the donkey is actively trying to kill itself/the country by leaping away from the "safe and sound financial road" and into the abyss of "financial chaos."
Not much has changed since 1879, eh??
The donkey as a symbol for the Democrats also connected to Aesop's fable about the donkey who wears a lion's skin.
(CS Lewis fans may recall this story being reused in "The Last Battle")
In this cartoon, the Democratic media machine drives the public to panic about President Ulysses Grant being a dictator while the GOP elephant is warily teetering on the edge of another unstable cliff.
Like I said, not much has changed!
On the positive side, the elephant was supposed to represent strength and courage and maturity that could take on a braying donkey, or even a lion or tiger.
But the cry has gone out from Republican voters that even elephants in an age of RINOs is not enough: Many people want a new symbol to revitalize American politics for a future that isn't entrenched in the same old arguments.
What do you think?
Is it time to get rid of the icons of the 19th century and come up with new political symbols that represent the shifting futures of America's political parties, or should we stick with what we know?
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