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Is it fair to call Republicans "The Party of Lincoln"?

Is it fair to call Republicans "The Party of Lincoln?"

  • Yes, Lincoln's policies were ideologically equivalent to the modern GOP's

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • No, Lincoln's policies were not consistent to the modern GOP's

    Votes: 20 80.0%

  • Total voters
    25
The GOP has often been called "The Party of Lincoln." It's true that the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln.

But the implication is that the party is politically aligned with how Lincoln was. Do you think that that is a true description?

Absolutely not. The Republocrats are the party of Corporate and State Power. Nothing more.
 
Republocrat? What's that? Is that like a pluot? Those are amazing!

No, it's the single party. Republican + Democrat = Republocrat. There's no difference between the main parties, so there's no reason to address them by different names.
 
I'm glad you agree it's a problem. I sympathize with the average Republican who are embarrassed by the representatives of their party that make the most offensive statements. Still, I think rational representatives have to shame their peers when they make outrageous statements. I've seen more examples of these call-outs recently, but for a while there the silence was thunderous.

I agree but most republicans are either afraid to condemn the idiocy of other republicans or actually support the idiocy under a kitchen sink type philosophy, hoping something sticks.
 
The GOP has often been called "The Party of Lincoln." It's true that the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln.

But the implication is that the party is politically aligned with how Lincoln was. Do you think that that is a true description?

MLK was a member of the Party of Lincoln
 
Republicans have a love/hate relationship with Lincoln. They love to claim he freed the slaves when it's a conversation on race, then they throw him under the bus for violating the "state's right" to allow ownership of people and with the same face claim he never freed anyone. You can't make that kind of schizophrenia up folks. It's happened on this forum many a time.
 
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Republicans have a love/hate relationship with Lincoln. They love to claim he freed the slaves when it's a conversation on race, then they throw him under the bus for violating the "state's right" to own slave. You can't make that kind of schizophrenia up folks.

Actually nobody in the US thought a lot about Lincoln for years. Then Obama was elected and started to pretend he was the new Lincoln and people started comparing the two and laughing at Obama's foolishness.
 
Actually nobody in the US thought a lot about Lincoln for years....

I am sorry you never had access to a federally funded school or library for that matter. Did you ever celebrate 4th of July? Or maybe read a book on American history? Actually, do you live in America? Because, I remember growing up in America and seeing his face on about 15 different movies and just as many TV shows in a 10 year span. You couldn't even turn the history channel in the 90s without seeing the civil war on once a week. Maybe I just grew up in modern America and you grew up in 3000 BCE's America.

http://www.imdb.com/list/sendtODSyfA/

http://www.historynet.com/the-best-and-worst-lincoln-movies.htm

http://www.reasons.org/blogs/reflections/top-five-abraham-lincoln-movies

http://www.inquisitr.com/193150/jus...-have-there-been-written-three-stories-worth/


That's 3 dozen movies (not even going into TV shows), and 15,000 books written on Lincoln.... again...

I'm sure you just grew up in a different America than I did. However, that doesn't take away from the claim that just because YOU didn't think a lot about Lincoln, nobody else did either. I'm sure the people who wrote 15,000 books and made 3 dozen movies on him thought about him enough to try and make money from his name.
 
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Actually nobody in the US thought a lot about Lincoln for years. Then Obama was elected and started to pretend he was the new Lincoln and people started comparing the two and laughing at Obama's foolishness.

Yeah, this has got to be a joke. America has never stopped thinking about Lincoln. Here's a cursory list of his cultural significance:

1867: Capitol of Nebraska named Lincoln
1909: Lincoln penny
1922: Lincoln Memorial
1929: Lincoln five dollar bill
1984: Gore Vidal's "Lincoln"
2005: Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals"
 
Interesting question. Although Democrats don't use "The Party of FDR" as a shorthand for the party, he is still the most revered figure from the party.

Still, I think the Democratic party is a lot less liberal since FDR's time. FDR was way more focused on the poor, whereas modern Democrats have accepted the political difficulty of focusing on them and instead focus on the Middle Class and class mobility. In 1944 the top tax income rate was set at 94%. Democrats want to tax the rich higher, but not by that much. FDR created a huge amount of government spending to work on the country's infrastructure, support the arts, and put people back to work. While Democrats support these goals today, they are obstructed by the huge national debt that already exists, preventing us from spending our way out of the slow recovery.

I'd say that modern Democrats are ideologically aligned with FDR, but only up to a point, and they give way to pragmatism most of the time.

You don't know much about FDR.
 
MLK was a member of the Party of Lincoln

I think assigning MLK to the Republican Party needs some clarification in the interest of intellectual honesty.

Firstly, what is a Republican? I think there are three possible definitions:

1. Someone who has in some way officially associated with the Republican Party. This could include running for office as a GOP candidate, becoming a GOP campaign worker in some capacity or registering as a republican in a closed primary state. Georgia, MLK's home state is an open primary state that does not ask party affiliations of voters and to my understanding he never ran for office or worked as a GOP employee or volunteer. I do remember now MLK lived in Massachusetts, Alabama and Illinois for short periods and unlike Georgia might be closed primary states. I am unaware of any declaration of party affiliation by MLK while living outside of Georgia.

2. Someone who votes for republican candidates along strict party lines. For MLK this would have to mean he voted against the two presidents who did more for Civil Rights than any others, JFK and LBJ.

3. Someone who self-identifies as a republican. This one is in my opinion is possible but dubious. People who are highly involved in activism that benefits from having as few political foes as possible, often are wise with their political associations and either keep their political leanings secret and/or if they do live in a closed primary state say they're independent. This is done specifically to have friends and not enemies in the interest of what they see as a greater cause. I have not been able to see anything conclusive from MLK himself where he self-identified as a republican. The only evidence of which I am aware regarding an MLK GOP party affiliation is MLK's niece Alveda King, herself a GOP activist, is on record as saying her uncle was a republican coupled with no one in the civil rights leadership nor other members of the king family denying it.

Here's what I think is probably the most honest answer. MLK was politically independent who voted for republicans in southern state and local races were segregationists ran the democrat party at the time and voted for democrats in presidential elections where at the federal level the democrats were the biggest allies in the quest for racial equality.

An fun extra credit exercise would be to look into the history and see where MLK stood on the issues.

- obviously, he supported civil rights for minorities.
- he was against the Viet-Nam War
- he supported anti-poverty programs
- as a champion of non-violence he probably would have been for gun control
- he was in Memphis on that fateful day because he was helping in a worker action where black sanitation department employees were acting as a type of labor union and were on strike demanding better compensation and conditions.

...cant think of anything else off the top.
 
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Actually nobody in the US thought a lot about Lincoln for years.

Maybe you didn't think a lot about Lincoln for years, but that's far from "nobody in the US". Most Americans only know a few presidents from before their own birth. Washington and Lincoln are probably the two big ones. Most Americans couldn't point out many previous presidents in a painting, but Lincoln is one of the ones that they almost all know. Most Americans can't name a significant accomplishment for more than about 5 or 6 presidents, but Lincoln is always one they can. Lincoln is one of the most popular presidents we've had.

Rasmussen, a largely conservative polling agency, listed the most favored presidents, in order, as: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, FDR and JFK, with Lincoln getting 92%. This was during GWB's presidency, so before Obama. They listed the least favored as Nixon, last, and GW Bush, second last.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/content/pdf/4346

Every basic history text teaches only a few presidents. They don't spend much time on Filmore and Buchanan and Polk, etc., but they all cover Lincoln -- along with other notables such as Washington and Jefferson.

I don't know where you get the idea that no one thought much of Lincoln until President Obama was elected.
 
Neither are consistent with Lincoln. It's just that Democrats are much more removed than the Republicans.
 
The GOP has often been called "The Party of Lincoln." It's true that the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln.

But the implication is that the party is politically aligned with how Lincoln was. Do you think that that is a true description?

Technically true, but anachronistic.
 
I think that you are reading far too much into "The Party of Lincoln". He was the first majorly successful republican, so there is nothing wrong with referring to the republican party as "The Party of Lincoln".

The Republican glory years: when the party actually had sound policy and great leadership. I would no sooner deny the Republicans this glory than I would deny the Cubs fan their 1908 World Series championship.
 
The GOP has often been called "The Party of Lincoln." It's true that the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln.

But the implication is that the party is politically aligned with how Lincoln was. Do you think that that is a true description?
Well, you should know that binary reasoning cannot be all there is. None of are parties can be consistent with policies of the past.

The party of Lincoln... Yes. As for your qualifiers, no.
 
How much is racism a factor? Not saying every Republican is a racist, or that some Democrats aren't. Just a lot of Dixiecrats became Southern Republicans.
The constant liberal lie.

There were all along since the Civil War, more racist democrats than republicans. Racism still exists in both parties, but even today. More democrats are racist than republicans.

More republicans as a percentage voted for the 1964 Civil Rights act than democrats.

Too many democrats believe in quota systems even today, which means they think blacks are inferior, and need help. That they can't compete equally.

Think about it. Prejudice is not racism. Racism has to do with believing another race is inferior.
 
Actually nobody in the US thought a lot about Lincoln for years. Then Obama was elected and started to pretend he was the new Lincoln and people started comparing the two and laughing at Obama's foolishness.
You're joking, right?
 
I think assigning MLK to the Republican Party needs some clarification in the interest of intellectual honesty.

<snip>

Well, I have a feeling his niece wouldn't make that claim if it was false.
 
Well, I have a feeling his niece wouldn't make that claim if it was false.

You'd have reason to doubt it, actually. His niece doesn't own his legacy when other family members have contradicted her, as have numerous scholars, when we have documentation that shows the severe weakness of her claims by the actual party votes he had claimed to have made, to what extent was his organizational strength derived from not usually explicitly endorsing candidates, who he publicly campaigned for and against, and what that meant in terms of philosophical/coalition differences between then and now.
 
You'd have reason to doubt it, actually. His niece doesn't own his legacy when other family members have contradicted her, as have numerous scholars, when we have documentation that shows the severe weakness in the actual party votes he had claimed to have made, and what that meant in terms of philosophical/coalition differences between then and now.

Really?

In '64, around 80% of the republicans voted YES for the civil rights act. Only around 60% of the democrats did.

Just one reason MLK would align himself with many republican. He has stated he normally voted democrat, but that was before the Civil rights act, and just voting "mostly for" should tell us he was likely not partisan. Still, she claims he had registered as a republican. He may have previously been registered as a democrat. Without digging up the archives, we really don't know, and I haven't seen such work done.
 
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