rally 'round the flag

rally 'round the flag

Support a candidate, cause, or country. The phrase was ascribed to General Andrew Jackson at the battle of New Orleans but soon came to be used in American politics for supporting a campaign. It entered the vocabulary once and for all with George F. Root’s Civil War song “The Battle Cry of Freedom”: “Rally ’round the flag, boys, Rally once again, Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.”
See also: flag, rally
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • how about
  • how/what about...?
  • from my cold, dead hands
  • eggs is eggs
  • How long is a piece of string?
  • (one's) best foot forward
  • best foot forward
  • (as) sure as eggs (is eggs)
  • sure as eggs is eggs
  • game on
References in periodicals archive
The first is the "rally 'round the flag" model, in which threats universally boost support for the leader through emotion.
rally 'round the flag effect, anger, anxiety, perceived threat, reactive liberal hypothesis, Japan, China
First, the "rally 'round the flag" effect (henceforth, the "rally effect") is a conventional theoretical framework to explain the impacts of threat perception on incumbent support--that is, voter approval of political leaders will increase when the country is under threat (Gaines 2002; Hetherington and Nelson 2003; Mueller 1973).
Hamas, this theory goes, is trying to change the subject from its conflict with Fatah by picking a fight with Israel in order to create a rally 'round the flag effect.
Washington, July 8 (ANI): Anger, not anxiety, is what makes people supportive of a president when a nation is going to war-a phenomenon known as the "rally 'round the flag effect", according to a study based in US.
Newman was an accomplished leading man and his oeuvre covered a range of genres and styles, from his wonderful comic performance in McCarey's Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys, to the modern male hero figure in Preminger's Exodus or the character studies of The Hustler and Hud.
"Rally 'Round The Flag: Chicago And The Civil War" by Theodore Karamanski (Professor of History, Loyola University of Chicago) is an impressive, informative, and scholarly history of Chicago history during the years of the American Civil War.
The pro-apartheid National Party gained political momentum it had lost years before, largely due to the intense "rally 'round the flag" boost that all sanctioned pariah governments - from South Africa to Iraq - tend to enjoy.
Whatever the type, they all rally 'round the flag flying Epictetus's dictum, "It is not actions but opinions concerning actions, that most irritate men."
One would think, therefore, that newspaper people would rally 'round the flag to do what they can to reverse the trend and keep the flag flying.
Rallying Song Yes, we'll rally 'round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again, Shouting the battle-cry of freedom; We will rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain, Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.
But my personal list of the 25 greatest Hollywood films would surely include Ruggles of Red Gap, The Awful Truth, Make Way for Tomorrow and Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys.