What Would The Great Emancipator Think?

What would the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, think of our current political scene were he to return to walk the earth this February 12, the 207th anniversary of his birth?
Our answer is that he would be appalled at what he would hear from his own party.
Granted, Lincoln was no saint when he first started speaking out against slavery. He did not believe in total equality for African-Americans. He doubted whether even freed slaves should stay in the U.S. From the start of his career through at least through the first two years of the Civil War, he pushed for a combination of compensated emancipation - payments to slave owners ‰ÛÓ and deportation of the freed slaves to Liberia.
But by the end of the war, thanks to his conscience, his standards, discussions with Frederick Douglass and other progressives and - yes - the military necessity of weakening the South by liberating its slaves, Lincoln had come a long way and was prepared to go farther for them. And he extended his liberating views to workers, to immigrants and more.
Now look at the Republicans who are running to be the latest party standard bearer to sit in the chair Lincoln once occupied. They’re a horrifying sight.
They’re anti-worker. They’re anti-African American. They’re anti-Latino. They’re anti-woman. They want to erect a wall against Mexico and bar Moslems from the U.S. And that’s just the presidential hopefuls. The record of other elements of the party is as bad, if not worse.
It was Abraham Lincoln whose Emancipation Proclamation set up freedom for the slaves as an ultimate goal.
It was Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans who pushed the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery and other forms of non-penal servitude.
It was Republicans who followed Lincoln after his murder who enacted the amendment guaranteeing due process of law in the states, as well as under the federal Constitution.
It was Republicans who followed Lincoln who pushed through the amendment that says anyone born in the U.S. has the right to vote, to run for office, even to be elected president.
And now?
It is the current Republicans - let’s call them the anti-Lincoln Republicans - who legislate to deprive minorities of their rights.
It is the anti-Lincoln Republicans who, by scheming to destroy workers’ rights, plot to create for workers a return to a form of slavery, wage slavery.
It is the anti-Lincoln Republicans who run roughshod over due process of law.
It is the anti-Lincoln Republicans who want to revoke and limit citizenship.
It is the anti-Lincoln Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court - the five GOP-named justices - who trashed the Voting Rights Act’s strong enforcement provisions.
We could go on, but you get the idea. It is the anti-Lincoln Republicans, who appear to be the majority of their party, or at least of their political class, who want to undo the achievements of the Great Emancipator and his successors.
What would Lincoln think? He’d be appalled, dismayed, disgusted and very vocal against these stands. He’d be out on the campaign trail, vehemently arguing against them.
And that’s not my political party, he would say. It’s the party of those folks who enslaved people. Of those folks who lost the Civil War. And that is truly appalling.
In other words, Donald Trump doesn’t come from nowhere. The GOP has set the stage for candidates like Trump - and other zealous presidential hopefuls like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson - for more than a generation. So far to the right are these people that ordinary conservatives like Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush seem like 1960s Flower Children.
Our job is to reject extreme points of view, disown the politics of divide-and-conquer and hold to our highest ideals. Donald Trump can’t make America great. Only Americans can do that.