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As our austere and swagalicious Party President mentioned in his first media article, I'm back in the Feds. This was... only slightly unprecedented, as I had previously said I would be taking a break from doing any real things for a while, but hey: I am nothing if not loyal to my friends.

So, here I am. And Tenshibo has given me a great task. Everyone knows that for quite a while now, the Federalist Party has been the premier party of this country, but I doubt most people who are in the party today know much of its history. Sure, old players such as myself may know patches of it, but many of our great historians have come and gone.

Thus, it's time for a refresher. For the next month, I will be presenting you a series detailing the history of our party. And we start, as always, at the beginning...


In the beginning, there were no Feds. There was no pride, there was no horniness. There was just politics, players, and a simple little party called ERepublikans for Change. And among their gentle, conservative ranks was a young reporter named Rise.

Rise was, if anything, a dedicated fellow. In the first 300 days of this game, he kept a short but dutiful account of many happenings. One such happening occurred only 10 months into the RFC's existence, in October of 2008. You see, like many who joined early, the RFC had rooted itself in real world politics and modeled themselves after a real life political party, in this case the Republican Party. However, as the RFC had expanded and grown, more and more members had joined who were not IRL Republicans. As the meta inevitably expanded itself, many were concerned that the party name no longer matched the party's identity. And with the sudden departure of the party's President, it was now that an interesting historical figure stepped onto the scene. Taking over for the bygone PP was none other than ThisGenMedia, aka Teacher, aka Franco...

...aka Harrison Richardson.


Harrison saw the plight of the party, and decided to hold a vote. As the original RFC forum did not survive the tides of time, we only have secondhand sources we can rely upon which say that the vote was originally to change the name, but was then rescinded.

This new name was the Federalist Party. And the reason it was overruled as the new party name is somewhat silly. Apparently, in many people's attempts to find a new name for the RFC, they had stumbled across the Federalist name as a possibility. However, as the young politicos learned more about the RL Federalist ideology, they realized that not even that properly represented what the party was at the time.

At least... some of them thought it didn't fit.

The next few days after the failed vote were rife with frustration, and at one point the then named ThisGenMedia actually did rename the party to the Federalist Party. He said that it would help not alienate RL democrats, and that it would keep the young Rise from naming a party that himself, as he had by far been the most vocal supporter of the change. In what is the very first mention of the Federalist Party ever in this game, Rise lamented that these ideals and the name of the Feds had not been agreed upon. Evenso, ThisGenMedia stayed the course with the name in order to prevent the eager Rise from taking it. TGM thought it would unite the party.

Next month, he lost the PP election to Dishmcds.


It's funny, because at this point, history could have gone very differently. Dish could've kept the party name, and maybe after a little time, another vote would've been called and it would be changed to something else, like it eventually did in changing it's name to the Coservative Party. Maybe Rise's passion for the Federalist ideals and name might've faded if it had been kept out of his hands and wrongfully ascribed. Or maybe the party would've fizzled at the name still being kept, as so many of those early parties did. But the winds of change are fickle, and history often turns on the whims of one simple person.

In this case? It was Dish renaming the currently named Federalist party to the Jedi Council.


And this was just the opportunity Rise needed. With his passion for a real Federalist party still intact and burning, he seized the moment and created it, using the same party id number we still use today. Even then, the Fed ideals we still keep as a party were present:


As can be seen in his wording, the problems of back then were somewhat more complex than they were today. But the gist of it all was still there: a party that place the nation before itself, placed the ideas of federalism at its heart. A party which placed the eUSA first in all regards.

Rise was a good President, full of the youthful vigor of young players at that time. He celebrated the growth of the party after five days, its membership rising from 5 to 17. The party's early focus not only on placing the nation's needs above others but giving each member a voice was evident even then, and swayed such members as Tiacha to join it.


With a rapid rise, and a strong commitment to in-game idealism that could translate to member involvement, the newly christened Federalists quickly took off. As the country entered 2009, things looked good for the hopeful upstart. But not everything would stay peachy forever. The party had more growing pains to go through...