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"John Randolph's replies after theirs [his colleagues in the House and Senate] are unprintable and shocked even Congress.

He called Daniel Webster “a vile slanderer,” President Adams a “traitor,” and Edward Livingston “the most contemptible and degraded of beings, whom no man ought to touch, unless with a pair of tongs.” In return, people called him “the half-mad Virginian,” “that long-dreaded churl and tyrant,” “a planetary plague,” “a boy with a mischievous syringe full of dirty water,” and “a maniac in his strait jacket, accidentally broken out of his cell.”

He challenged Daniel Webster to a duel over a debate on sugar. He called John Eppes a liar and promptly accepted his challenge. Nothing happened. Associates kept negotiating him out of duels. Once, he retracted his words. He told a man that he “wasn’t fit to carry guts to a bear.” The man demanded an apology or a duel. Randolph smiled and said, all right, he’d take it back, the fellow was fit to carry guts to a bear.

A raging snob, he hated democracy, the working classes, Negroes, most people who weren’t Virginians, and above all, Kentucky, that unworthy backwoods poor relation of Virginia’s, and Kentuckians like Henry Clay."

Source:

Holland, Barbara. “V. Birth of a Nation.” Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk. Bloomsbury, 2004. 121-22. Print.

"John Randolph's replies after theirs [his colleagues in the House and Senate] are unprintable and shocked even Congress. He called Daniel Webster “a vile slanderer,” President Adams a “traitor,” and Edward Livingston “the most contemptible and degraded of beings, whom no man ought to touch, unless with a pair of tongs.” In return, people called him “the half-mad Virginian,” “that long-dreaded churl and tyrant,” “a planetary plague,” “a boy with a mischievous syringe full of dirty water,” and “a maniac in his strait jacket, accidentally broken out of his cell.” He challenged Daniel Webster to a duel over a debate on sugar. He called John Eppes a liar and promptly accepted his challenge. Nothing happened. Associates kept negotiating him out of duels. Once, he retracted his words. He told a man that he “wasn’t fit to carry guts to a bear.” The man demanded an apology or a duel. Randolph smiled and said, all right, he’d take it back, the fellow was fit to carry guts to a bear. A raging snob, he hated democracy, the working classes, Negroes, most people who weren’t Virginians, and above all, Kentucky, that unworthy backwoods poor relation of Virginia’s, and Kentuckians like Henry Clay." Source: Holland, Barbara. “V. Birth of a Nation.” Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk. Bloomsbury, 2004. 121-22. Print.

(post is archived)

CAVUTO: How would that go, if you had, let's say, five or six people running?

VENTURA: Terrific. It gives you — it makes it like the grocery store.

Right now, when you go in the grocery store, to the soft drink department, you have only Coke and Pepsi to choose from, two colas, one slightly sweeter than the other, depending which side of the ledger you're on.

CAVUTO: So, you want more choice?

VENTURA: I want more choices. I am fiscally conservative, but I am socially liberal. Nobody of these represents me.

CAVUTO: Oh, but, Governor, the rap against an independent candidate even succeeding — and you succeeded at getting elected governor...

VENTURA: Yes.

CAVUTO: ... is that it is very hard to work with traditional Republicans and Democrats, because they are going to make your life difficult.

So, unless you get a lot of independents elected with you, they are up against the same wall that a traditionalist would be.

VENTURA: Yes.

But that fits both feet. I make their life very difficult, too. Remember that. To me, it is all about why we need more than two. When Abraham Lincoln was president, we had three choices.

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: And his was the upstart party at the time, right?

VENTURA: Yes. And how much has our population grown since then? Immensely.

Why is — the two-party system, it — to me, it gives you one more choice than communist Russia...

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: All right.

VENTURA: ... or Castro in Cuba. Castro would run.

(CROSSTALK)

VENTURA: Well, you either voted for...

(CROSSTALK)

VENTURA: ... or nothing. Well, wow. We give you two.