Why do Republicans like to stress that they are the "party of Lincoln"?

Abiding by today's Republican Party standards, it is my belief that Lincoln wouldn't be welcome. In fact, a case could be made that Lincoln was a liberal. So why do Republicans lay claim to Lincoln as one of their greatest Presidents?

Do you think Lincoln was liberal, conservative or a mishmash of both?

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!

Yes... how it must piss off their racist base to have to publicly honor Lincoln... But, given the fact that REPUGS don't understand concepts like hypocrisy or irony, it surely must be lost on them.

in order to embrace Lincoln....

Lincoln was supportive of sending slaves "back to Africa".......I guess that's good enough for the average racist to embrace him as one of their own....

We're "conservatives" that spend...

We're "pro-life" except that we're "pro-choice"

We love the military so much we use them as cannon fodder in unnecessary oil wars.

We love working people soo much that we think rich people should pay less taxes...

An alternate version of that statement is: "I have a lots of friends who are...."

Century or even earlier. A version of Feudalism that is their fantasy 'golden age' that never was.
I have noticed that they seem to yearn for a time/situation that never really existed.
I also think Abe Lincoln would give them an earful and make them cry, that is if tehy had any empathy, sympathy or any other of the more tender human emotions.

A progressive idea for its time.

Now the past 40 years or so?...bupkis.

Texas Repukes think the Republican Party was created by Ronald Reagan.

The Party of Lincoln doesn't go over all that well with many of my South Carolina relatives either and every damned one of them believes Reagan walked on water and at the same time they are utterly unable to remember the name Nixon.

It's become a party of catch phrases, codewords and spin points. No real meat to the bones, just verbage. A branding. Nothing more these days...cause they don't have anything.

elected Republican president and they (the pukes) like to think they are still like him. Ha! what a joke.

If Lincoln was able to see this gang of liars and thugs ala' Cheney he would spin in his grave.

not uncommon at the time, and he presided over the bloodiest war in US history. Gives them Pubbies some wood.

Note that they never, EVER call themselves the party of Teddy Roosevelt, who would certainly be most unwelcome in the modern GOP.

Note that they rarely, if ever, mention Eisenhower-- who was the only jenn-yoo-wine war hero they ever had in the Oval Office, aside from Teddy. More'n likely bringing up the guy who beat the shit out of Hitler would embarass the chickenhawks. And Ike, actually knowing a little something about war, spent a lot of time preaching about how we shouldn't be getting into any more of them.

and it made me realize why my dad was a republican back then. The republicans even up to then were more like the dems are today. Kennedy and then nixon changed all that though and then along comes raygun driving it home. The :puke:s have sucked for years now

They had been hoping that they could say they're the party of George Bush, but he went and used up all his capital and left them broke

Could call him a liberal. From what I have gleaned he was more of a moderate or even a libertarian. This is a quote from the article I was reading". "He repeatedly advocated self-reliance and the opportunity for individuals to improve their own situation through independent hard work and personal responsibility." More here....http://montrosepress.com/articles/2009/02/12/opinion/columnists/doc4993a12003d07493066919.txt

Some liberals like to say he "freed the slaves" to which conservatives would say he did no such thing.

He implemented the first income tax to pay for war yet he gave corporate welfare to railroad companies in the form of free land....

The Homestead Act gave away free land to anyone who could abide by the laws of the act...

Is all that stuff liberal, conservative or both?

Probably call him a moderate!I don't think either party these days could claim him because he really didn't espouse the purity both the left and the right demand. Seems he had an overabundance of common sense! :toast:

They buy into the "grew up in a log cabin reading by candlelight and became President" as an example of some great boot-strap-pulling fantasy crap, and they all tend to see themselves as "self-made" which is why they don't think taxes and the benefits of living in a civilized society mean anything - they simply cannot seem to get it through their skulls that without a stable society their success would mean little, nor that they likely did not start with nothing as they so romantically seem to believe.

eom

...like Corporations and Big Money and the Mafia and the Klan and loot-the-earth and all-its-inhabitants and the rest of all that ruling elite privilege stuff.

and pennies are all most people get when they are in office.

That's about the extent of the connection I see. :shrug:

when you're the party aligned with the values of the Ku Klux Klan.

flip the argument, and actually BECOME the Party of Lincoln once more.

They've got a ways to go....but keep your eye on them. I don't think Michael Steele, Meghan McCain, and "Bobby" Jindal are accidents.

We can't ever get complacent.

Lincoln was NO liberal--he used his federal power with a VERY heavy hand to keep the union together. A president pulling that kind of shit nowadays would be excoriated on this forum. The "freeing the slaves" bit was a combination of opportunity and calculated political thinking. He wasn't a stand-on-the-ramparts abolitionist. If, in order to preserve the union, and the ONLY way he could have preserved the union, would have been to endorse slavery at the federal level, well, he might have/probably would have done it.

There were others, but.... yeah.

And to 'rebrand' themselves as being less racist, although ironically most of them who I know also like to argue that the civil war was not fought over slavery, but States' Rights, which is something that ... ugh. Sorry -my brain cannot comprehend the average rightwinger's ability to somehow string together being both pro-States' Rights and pro-Lincoln.

friggin morans.

They need "Heros" so bad...they use anything ...even if its 200 years old....

GOP = Greedy Obstinate Perverts