WONDERS, THEY TRULY NEVER CEASE!

By Edwin Cooney

On January 14th, 2011, the GOP, in its wisdom, chose Wisconsin State Republican Chairman Reince Priebus to be Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Born Reinhold Reince Priebus on Saturday, March 18th, 1972 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the son of Greek and German parents, young Reince reached his majority in 1993 while studying history and political science at the University of Wisconsin.

As a child of the late seventies, eighties and early nineties, it’s only natural that Ronald Reagan is one of his heroes. However, as I see it, there is much that is inconsistent in the personalities and political outlooks of President Reagan and Chairman Priebus’s other proclaimed hero: Abraham Lincoln.

Today’s Republican Party seems to have totally abandoned the fate of black America - the beneficiaries of Father Abraham’s most lasting legacy. Although GOP leaders say that Republicans treat blacks like they are self-reliant citizens while insisting that Democrats treat blacks like “plantation slaves,” somehow up to 95 percent of black voters just don’t see it that way. Not since Dwight Eisenhower has a Republican presidential candidate won the black vote. Blacks, GOP leaders insist, would surely become Republicans if Democrats would stop pandering to their demands to be “cared for” by the federal government. That’s a really powerful message since every red-blooded American realizes that today’s Republican Party simply has no constituency to pander to.

Over the years, many have wondered whether Washington or Lincoln could be elected president in the age of television. Normally, I resist trying to decide whether make-up could sufficiently cover the mole above and to the right of Abe Lincoln’s mouth or soften the lines on his long and weathered face enough to make him presentable on television. I don’t even spend much time wondering whether Mr. Lincoln’s awkward appearance and rather high and occasionally piercing voice would attract or frighten modern voters. However, in view of its constituency, I think it’s reasonable and even useful to wonder if Abraham Lincoln could come close to getting the modern Republican Party’s presidential nomination! I’m absolutely sure Ike, Gerry Ford and Richard Nixon couldn’t get the 2012 GOP presidential nod. Even more, in view of his disdain for the Christian right, it’s not likely that even Barry Goldwater would pass muster in today’s GOP.

Abraham Lincoln believed, as today’s Republicans do, that private enterprise should be the driving economic force in America. However, like President Obama, Mr. Lincoln also believed that government should invest in America’s infrastructure. The Lincoln Administration invested in land grant colleges and in the Homestead Act which enabled otherwise financially strapped farmers to settle the west. It was also Mr. Lincoln whose administration proposed the first income tax (later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court) and created the first paper money (known as “greenbacks”) to finance the Civil War. He also insisted that: “…as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”

At the outset of the Civil War, President Lincoln sought to save the union while allowing slavery in the states where it existed as long as that “peculiar institution” didn’t expand. As the war progressed, Lincoln realized that the status of black men and women had a direct effect on the war and on the future of the nation. Thus, he abandoned the GOP’s 1860 platform and not only issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but also eventually supported the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which outlawed slavery.

It’s undeniable that the Old South, the heart of today’s GOP, continues to resent Lincoln’s greatest legacy. There’s a reason why the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, all of which voted for segregationist Strom Thurmond in 1948 and against LBJ and civil rights in 1964, remain the base of the new Republican Party’s quadrennial electoral vote expectations.

Hence we have something of a puzzle. Mr. Lincoln’s party’s newest leader, Reince Priebus, insists that, along with our fortieth president, our sixteenth president is one of his heroes. It should be noted that Chairman Priebus, as a law student, interned in the offices of the NAACP Defense Fund. Perhaps that sufficiently connects Chairman Priebus to Mr. Lincoln’s legacy, but Mr. Priebus’s internship hardly can do the same for a party that still worships the Confederate flag!

Chairman Priebus insists that the 2012 Republican candidate will save America from -- among other things -- abortion, high corporate taxes and government investment in infrastructure. Furthermore, counter to Mr. Lincoln’s administration and despite ongoing pecuniary obligations, Republicans promise low taxes and money based on the gold standard.

Question: It’s easy to spot Mr. Reagan’s legacy in all of this, but please tell me where in tarnation is Father Abraham’s?

We’ll just have to stay tuned, I suppose!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY