President Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave (if he's still in it). Members of the "Party of Lincoln" are far more likely to wave the treasonous Tennessee Confederate Battle Flag than Democrats. Lincoln is also the President who gave us the phrase about government being, "Of the people, by the people, and for the people." The Ghettysburg Address certainly enjoys a status equal to the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution in American Lore.
Ever since Reagan, however, Republican dogma has been that government is bad. If, as President Lincoln said, government is for the people, and as Thomas Jefferson wrote, governments are instituted among men to secure the unalienable rights to which we are all endowed, how does this not create cognitive dissonance?
If you've read previous posts of mine, you may be aware that I believe the Declaration of Indepence to be a legal document explaining why we had the right to dissolve our relationship with the British Empire. The Constitution was then written to create a government based upon the principles spelled out in the Declaration. Therefore, the primary purpose of government is to secure the unalienable rights of its citizens. By definition, then, government must be "for" the people.
I'll give you an example of what I mean. We recently had a housing foreclosure crisis. It was so bad that banks were foreclosing on houses that they did not even own. They hired people to sign affidavits to affirm that they had the title documents that they could not find, and courts accepted them. A government truly for "the people" would have asked for more proof than an affidavit. We were kicking people out of their homes, after all. Guess which party someone who said "government should help banks" belongs to.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a post on a site talking about how Congressman Paul Ryan blew the Wrong's latest case against Obamacare by stating that nearly every American would get the subsidy. Aside from the irony that Republicans ran against Obamacare by nominating the guy who invented it, what struck me most was Ryan's comment that people making less than $100,000 a year were nearly all Americans. Congressmen have a salary of $174,000. Nearly 75 percent more than "nearly all Americans."
Returning to "Honest Abe," he knew that in order for government to be for the people, it needed to be made up OF the people. A Congress that makes more than 3 times the median household income cannot legislate with an understanding of what life is like for The People.
One reason that our current government is not one OF the people is that it is also not made up BY the people. Voter participation sucks. The party OF Lincoln likes it that way. A government of, by, and for The People not only tends to pass more liberal policies, it also gets better results.