No US state has shaped its own brand of conservatism like Florida. Paul du Quenoy, Palm Beach Institute President, discussed the rise of the ‘Free State of Florida’ in a panel at Danube Institute.
The 1924 Democratic National Convention was perhaps the most chaotic party convention in American history. One of the major issues was whether or not the potential nominees were willing to denounce the Ku Klux Klan. The fear was it likely would trigger a backlash from their voter base in the South. Eventually, the party did not issue a condemnation. After a record 103 ballots, and even some fistfighting, former West Virginia Congressman John Davis got himself the nomination.
‘For those whose hearts beat on both sides of the Atlantic, the more productive consideration is what this election signifies for U.S.–Poland relations. Poland, like the United States, is bitterly divided between cosmopolitan urban areas and more conservative and religious exurbs and rural areas. After eight years of single-party Law & Justice rule, Polish conservatives are momentarily weak and banking heavily on a second Trump administration.’
‘Today, the Hungarian capital is part of the ongoing political discussion at the highest levels of American political life—for better or for worse. Hungary is either a symbol of all that is bad in the Western world—that’s how progressives, liberals, and neoconservatives see it; or it’s a plucky resister to globalism, social liberalism, and mass migration, a laboratory for a new kind of right-of-center policymaking.’
‘If you’re not a sovereign nation, then you’re just a land mass where people can come, they can live, they can work, they can seek refuge regardless of what the laws actually are…You see that now you have Venezuelan gangs who have taken over American communities that didn’t have a single presence in the United States just a few years ago. This has all happened in the last couple of years under the Biden-Harris policies. ‘
‘For us Hungarians it is easy to empathize with Americans over their national tragedy, 9/11, given Hungary’s centuries-long history of tragic events. In many ways, 9/11 is similar to Trianon—the greatest national tragedy of the country. The most significant parallel is that, like Trianon, the memory of 9/11 unites the nation often divided in everyday life, regardless of how deep the divisions may be.’
In the US Presidential election of 1876, the final vote count could not be decided in three states—Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina—due to rampant voter fraud. A special ‘Electoral Commission’ rewarded all 19 electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, despite him losing the popular vote to Democrat Samuel Tilden. Hayes won the Electoral College by a single vote. In order to avoid a second civil war, Hayes ended reconstruction, the military occupation of the South by the North after the American Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln was the first President ever elected from the Republican Party. He ran on a platform promising to prevent slavery from spreading within the Union. Therefore, his election directly led to the secession of 11 Southern states, which, in turn, led to the American Civil War.
In 1824 Andrew Jackson received both the most popular votes and the most electoral votes in the presidential election. However, since he failed to win a majority of the latter, the decision went to Congress. There, his nemesis, House Speaker Henry Clay used his influence to get John Quincy Adams elected instead of Jackson, for which President Adams rewarded him with the Secretary of State position in a ‘corrupt bargain’. The furious Jackson came back to defeat Adams in the 1828 election, then founded the Democratic Party in 1832, the party that occupies the White House today.
Two Hungarian American soldiers, both serving in the US Army, have received both the Purple Heart and the highest military award in the US, the Medal of Honor: Corporal Tibor ‘Ted’ Rubin for his service in the Korean War, and Staff Sergeant László Rábel for his service in the Vietnam War.