From Party of Lincoln to the Party of Trump, the decline of the GOP

Lincoln is a defining president and Destin Hall's qualifying of Abe shows what's happened to the Republican Party.

Last week, an Elon University poll asked Americans to name the best president. Twenty-six percent named Abraham Lincoln and another 12% named George Washington. Those answers are correct. Washington established the traditions of the presidency, most importantly the peaceful transfer of power, and Lincoln refined the definition of America as the country fractured.

Lincoln is my favorite president. He embodied the promise of America. Born into a poor frontier family, he rose to lead the nation at its most perilous time. He thought deeply about who we are as a country as he led us into the Civil War. He believed that equality, liberty, and democracy are worth the fight and the sacrifice.

Lincoln saw the Declaration of Independence as the foundational document of the country and the Constitution as upholding the principles set forth in the Declaration. He used a Biblical metaphor to compare the Declaration to an “apple of gold” protected by a silver frame that was the Constitution. One was a statement of ideals and aspirations that define the nation. The other established the rules for pursuing them.

The history of our country is divided by the Civil War. During the last 25 years of the 18th century, our ancestors were establishing a country and government like no other in the world. From 1800 to 1860, they were building a country that spanned the coasts, accumulating territory and establishing routes for expansion. The war created a dividing line.

Following the Civil War, we’ve been trying to achieve the vision that Lincoln had for our country. The expansion was no longer geographical, but ideological and emotional. Despite a brief period of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century, the great battles in the country have been over offering rights and liberty to all people.

We’ve had fits and starts. In the years immediately following the Civil War, we began the process of providing the full benefits of citizenship to African Americans, allowing them to enjoy the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that they had been denied. The backlash to their newfound rights and freedoms was fierce and by the early twentieth century, we had backtracked, creating a system of legal segregation that lasted until the Civil Rights Movement.

Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the country picked up from where it left off in the late 1800s, trying to achieve Lincoln’s vision of a more perfect union. That lasted about 50 years.

Today, we’re in the midst of a backlash against expanded freedoms and democracy again. The people who once talked about liberty now embrace exclusion. The most extreme reject even legal immigration and the entire Republican Party wants to erode democracy. It’s ironic that the ideals of Abraham Lincoln have largely been rejected by the Party of Lincoln.

You don’t have to look far for an example. When asked his favorite president, North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall said, “Here’s a good political answer: Thankfully, we’ve been blessed with a lot of good presidents.” That’s not a political answer. That’s a stupid answer, trying not to offend anybody and satisfying nobody.

More telling is his follow-up. “Abraham Lincoln did a pretty good job, all things considered. Reagan was great. And I’m a big fan of Donald Trump, and he is not done with his presidency yet, and so I imagine he’s going to be among the greats when he gets done.”

That’s just so disappointing. Qualifying Lincoln and listing Trump as “among the greats” is disingenuous. I don’t think Hall believes that because he’s smarter than that. He’s just pandering to a cultish base that still wishes the South had won the Civil War. Trump will be most remembered as the president who encouraged an attempted coup and was impeached twice. Hall knows that.

Maybe it doesn’t matter who our politicians like as presidents, but at least they should be able to articulate who they prefer and why. It really shouldn’t be controversial. That Hall thought he had to make a “political answer” says more about the people he’s trying not to offend than it does about him.

I had great hopes for Hall. Again, I’m just disappointed.