Republicans Don't Want To Talk About Abe Lincoln.

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Whenever they get nostalgic, they reminisce about the glory days when President Ronald Reagan helped bring down the Berlin Wall and dissolved the windfall profits tax. They make it sound like the Republican Party began with President Reagan and completely neglect to mention, for the most part, the greatest Republican of all time, President Lincoln. Why so shy about mentioning this great man, Republicans?

As a hate-filled republican, I'm not "shy" about mentioning the names of either. Both Lincoln and Reagan are yesterday's news and not on my radar screen so I don't think much about either, let alone talk about them.

Jefferson Davis was a democrat. If he were alive today I wonder how many of the more partisan dems would blindly support him only because he's not a republican.

The states rights based political philosophy - and unfortunately the white supremacy that had latched onto it - exemplified by Jefferson Davis and his cronies fit in more with what would be termed conservative politics. Political parties are hardly static, and in fact are constantly morphing. That's why the conservative Democrats of old were later replaced by liberals who realized a strong government was needed to redress abuses done to the vulnerable in the name of states rights. Just as the Republicans, once the party of strong central government that had freed millions of human beings, has in more recent times become the home of states rightsers, and with them, those who feel it's no one else' business but theirs if they want to disenfranchise an unpopular minority in their state.
That's why conservatives don't embrace Lincoln. Despite having been the first Republican President, he would have hardly fit in with the conservatives who had taken over his party today.

Essentially it is this:

Lincoln was a progressive liberal northerner; who freed the slaves, restricted states rights, used government to force equality in society, brought many new regulations into being, created the IRS, was the force behind the 13th, 14th, 15th, and lead to the 16th amendment (income tax) becoming law, he also signed the first income tax into being, put the South under federal military rule, and other stuff.

Today's Republicans on the other hand were so desperate to win elections and topple the ever increase voting share for Democrats.
They made it their mission to appeal to the bible belt and the Deep South after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2nd 1964, in which the Democrats betrayed the Solid South in favor of Civil Rights.
This single act lead to the Deep South/Solid South and bible belt becoming the core of Republican Party, which allowed the Republicans to win the election of 1968, leading to Nixon's Administration.

This realigned the political system in which Democrats became the centrist/liberal/progressive party and Republicans became the right/religious/conservative party.

Then in 2010 elections, the Republican Party became the far right/extreme religious an conservative with huge voter backlash against the BLACK president and the rise of the Tea Party!

To this day Speaker Boehner cannot control his caucus in the House to get most bills through.
This is also the same reason why the Republicans cannot nominate a truly moderate candidate for president (the party base won't vote for them in primary season).

I suppose most people don't want to imply that they're old enough to remember him (add proverbial bad-teeth smily that WP doesn't have).

I made a post earlier about how many problems would have been avoided if Jefferson abolished slavery but ended up not posting it because of possible misinterpretation.

Since the 1990's the backbone of the modern GOP has been White Southerners.

Lincoln is famous for winning "the war of Northern Aggression" against the White South.

Since the 1990's it DOES seem as if you dont hear the GOP as loudly proclaim itself as being the "party of Lincoln" as much as you used to.

Coincidence?

Lincoln was not a good man, he wasn't some dedicated abolitionist crusader and wasn't even personally opposed to the institution of slavery and you can look up the extensive amount of proof there is to back this up. He was more a power hungry despot who launched a war against the American people without consulting congress that end in the deaths of 600,000 people. Every other country had abolished slavery peacefully so why was war necessary in the US? He suspended habeas corpus, instituted a military draft, had concentration camps that would make Hitler blush, eliminated the right to free speech and a free press, Lincoln even had a member of congress from Ohio deported across enemy lines for opposing the war. He regularly made use of thuggish tactics like this to intimidate anyone that dare oppose his autocratic rule and much of this was directed at Northern citizens of which Lincoln imprisoned tens of thousands for not being loyal to his war effort. This is all without mentioning that the way in which the Union waged the war would be considered a war crime by all if only they fought under a different flag and time, they targeted civilian populations and burned entire cities to the ground. The deification of Lincoln only holds itself to one purpose, to justify and normalize the transformation of American as a constitutional republic into tyrannical state in which there is only the illusion of rights or democracy.

Slavery was on its way out as an institution at the time, its value of slave labor was rapidly declining as it was much cheaper to pay a worker a wage than to it was to invest in a slave that you have to house, feed, and provide medical treatment for as well as the advancements in technology. I think its very unlikely slavery would of continued to exist by the 20th century even if the Confederacy had survived, Brazil which had over 4 million total slaves imported into the country by the Portuguese Empire(over 10x the amount that was imported directly to North America) was able to completely abolish slavery peacefully by 1888.

It would of been cheaper to have simply bought the freedom of all the slaves in the US at the time than to fight a war which cost 600,00 American lives.