From Post #102. The second "non-sequitur".
A reply to your claim "Actually they appealed to reason". Actually they were largely a group of lawyers and were partisan as hell - something Washington complained about. Actually political discourse at the time was far more bitter and ill-mannered than today. Actually spin - more properly known as rhetoric - was coin of the realm then just as now and just as previously.
This is true and the "big idea" of the age. Rhetoric has very little to do with it.
Actually they were largely a group of lawyers
Some were, some weren't. Washington and Jefferson were planters. Franklin was . . . well, Frankin. Adams and Henry were lawyers IIRC. They were a remarkably diverse group considering that they were all upper class.
Actually political discourse at the time was far more bitter and ill-mannered than today.
Certainly that is true of newspapers. I would argue that the stakes were higher, however. I had a roommate who was from South Africa and he had a party once with a lot of his friends -- mostly white and Indian in descent, but they grew up in Africa. Elections are huge. It means the difference, sometimes, between life and death. I'm sure the same stakes held at the founding of the Republic. Conquest or descent into tyrrany was a real possibility.