In February 1861 the nation was on the eve of the Civil War. Another insurrectionist faction that disliked the outcome of an earlier presidential election was about to choose violence as a reaction to the ballot box. Those who equated individual liberty with the right to oppress others viewed the incoming president, Abraham Lincoln, as a threat.
On his way to his first inauguration Lincoln stopped in Philadelphia. Scheduled to give a Washington’ Birthday address at Independence Hall, the incoming president was warned not to make the appearance for fear of lurking Confederate assassins. Undaunted, Lincoln proceeded. He spoke of being “filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing … in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live.”
He continued by declaring, “If it can't be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But, if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle---I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”
But today’s GOP is different. It caters to a would-be Caesar who shows nothing to be disdain for liberal democracy. They would rather be a party who cower to street thugs and conspiracy theorists who want rule by an oppressive minority instead of rule by law. Whereas as Lincoln was willing to risk his life for American democracy, Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even risk alienating a voting bloc of conspiracy theorists and fringe alt-rightists.
The Republican Party is no longer the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Instead, it is now the Party of appeasement and Trump.
Right now, with seven exceptions, the GOP’s members of the upper branch of Congress appear have bought into another illusion that peace can be had with those willing to subvert the Constitution. The GOP has learned nothing from history, particularly the failure of democracy’s defenders in acquiescing to sedition.
There are those who believe that Lincoln should have let the Confederate States secede. But the 16th President knew better. He understood that letting them go would have brought more war for control of the territories as well as their desired expansion into Central and South America in order to build a slave empire. Lincoln’s GOP stopped that evil in its tracks.
Today’s GOP has only been emboldened evil.