Trump: Nobody knew GOP was party of Lincoln until I came along

[Landslide Lyndon]

OMFG! The narcissism, it hurts.

https://twitter.com/AmerIndependent/status/1281657586400538625

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I’ll use my bud plug as an example. He definitely knows who Abraham Lincoln is. He also knows what the Republican Party is. He most likely does not know that Lincoln was the first Republican President. Most Americans are not political history nerds.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This isn't an act. These are symptoms. This man is very ill.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

You'd be shocked as to how many people think Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Democrats.

Only 58% of Americans know that Lincoln was a Republican.  Of course, I doubt that many of these folks know that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat.  It's pretty sad if, in fact, Donald Trump (who is NOT Mr. Civics) has actually done something to increase that awareness.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

You'd be shocked as to how many people think Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Democrats.

Only 58% of Americans know that Lincoln was a Republican.  Of course, I doubt that many of these folks know that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat.  It's pretty sad if, in fact, Donald Trump (who is NOT Mr. Civics) has actually done something to increase that awareness.

Atlas overestimates how much people know about US political history. 

[Badger]

You'd be shocked as to how many people think Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Democrats.

Only 58% of Americans know that Lincoln was a Republican.  Of course, I doubt that many of these folks know that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat.  It's pretty sad if, in fact, Donald Trump (who is NOT Mr. Civics) has actually done something to increase that awareness.

But he hasn't, has He? At all.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I’ll use my bud plug as an example.

Dear lord, no one needs to know about your bud plug, or where you put it! This is suppose to be a family friendly forum. 

[ProudModerate2]

He should have said ... "Nobody knew a US president could be such an A-hole, until I came along."

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

You'd be shocked as to how many people think Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Democrats.

Only 58% of Americans know that Lincoln was a Republican.  Of course, I doubt that many of these folks know that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat.  It's pretty sad if, in fact, Donald Trump (who is NOT Mr. Civics) has actually done something to increase that awareness.

But he hasn't, has He? At all.

The uber-racialized discussion of politics over recent years has brought about more of a discussion of how Lincoln and the Republicans freed the slaves, how Robert "KKK" Byrd was Democratic Senate Majority Leader, etc.  It's not so much Trump (who isn't that much of a civics guy) as the tenor of the times.

The truth of American history was that the GOP WAS the "Civil Rights Party" until 1964.  Even then, most Republicans (and a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats) supported Civil Rights Legislation.  It is unfair, of course, to portray the Democrats as the party of Segregation; indeed, the Democratic Party gave up the most to become the more ardently pro-Civil Rights party in the 1960s.  It cost them their hegemony in Presidential elections, to the point where they elected one (1) President in the next six (6) Presidential elections.  But the truth is also that the GOP, and those that made up the GOP in Congress prior to the Goldwater nomination of 1964, were supporters of Civil Rights legislation, and were some of the best friends of the Civil Rights bills that there were.

[Inmate Trump]

Another stupid thing Trump says.

More and more excuses for him.

Same old, same old.

[Brittain33]

There's a big gap between "lots of Americans, possibly a majority, are ignorant of something" and "this was a secret lost to history until Trump brought it back."

[dead0man]

I’ll use my bud plug as an example.

Dear lord, no one needs to know about your bud plug, or where you put it! This is suppose to be a family friendly forum.  

Lmao!

I thought the same thing...do you really have a friend named plug?

[Joe Republic]

Pro-tip: whenever Trump utters the phrase "nobody ever heard of ___ before I came along", what he actually means is "I just found out that..."

Say what you will about his worrying signs of mental decline, but he just isn’t an intelligent man to begin with.  Never has been.

[ProudModerate2]

[HagridOfTheDeep]

The only reason people may not realize Lincoln was a Republican is that it’s so obvious he’d be a Democrat today, it hurts.

[politicallefty]

Pro-tip: whenever Trump utters the phrase "nobody ever heard of ___ before I came along", what he actually means is "I just found out that..."

Say what you will about his worrying signs of mental decline, but he just isn’t an intelligent man to begin with.  Never has been.

Don't forget, nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated!

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

The only reason people may not realize Lincoln was a Republican is that it’s so obvious he’d be a Democrat today, it hurts.

Democrats have long said this about Lincoln.  I am not convinced that this is the case.

Lincoln might well be a Charlie Baker/Larry Hogan Republican.  He was very much a strong Federal Government President, so he may well have been a Democrat today on that score.

[NewYorkExpress]

The only reason people may not realize Lincoln was a Republican is that it’s so obvious he’d be a Democrat today, it hurts.

Democrats have long said this about Lincoln.  I am not convinced that this is the case.

Lincoln might well be a Charlie Baker/Larry Hogan Republican.  He was very much a strong Federal Government President, so he may well have been a Democrat today on that score.

As much as it pains me to agree with you Fuzzy, I believe you are correct. Lincoln probably would be very similar politically to Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Wrong, Eisenhower and Ford were compassionate conservatives whom didnt use the Southern strategy to the extent Reagan and Nixon did.  Eisenhower got rid of Jim Crow laws with Brennan and Earl Warren and Potter Stewart to SCOTUS

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The only reason people may not realize Lincoln was a Republican is that it’s so obvious he’d be a Democrat today, it hurts.

Democrats have long said this about Lincoln.  I am not convinced that this is the case.

Lincoln might well be a Charlie Baker/Larry Hogan Republican.  He was very much a strong Federal Government President, so he may well have been a Democrat today on that score.

Except Republicans tend to forget their views on small government and classical Whiggery (opposition to Presidential Power) every time they get the White House and doubly so every time said Republican is a war time Presidency.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

The only reason people may not realize Lincoln was a Republican is that it’s so obvious he’d be a Democrat today, it hurts.

Democrats have long said this about Lincoln.  I am not convinced that this is the case.

Lincoln might well be a Charlie Baker/Larry Hogan Republican.  He was very much a strong Federal Government President, so he may well have been a Democrat today on that score.

As much as it pains me to agree with you Fuzzy, I believe you are correct. Lincoln probably would be very similar politically to Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan.

I will also say that if Lincoln went that route, he would not be a likely Presidential nominee.  Of course, I don't think Lincoln thought he'd be President in 1856, or even 1858.

The Republican Party of 1860 was a far more diverse group than what we have now.  The Party was less than 6 years old, and it was a coalition:

"We went into the little meeting held in a schoolhouse, Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Democrats. We came out of it as Republicans and we were the first Republicans in the union.

Lincoln was a former Whig.  As such, they were more in favor of chartering a Central Bank, and less liberal in terms of popular democracy than would be the average Democrat of the day.  Now the new Republican Party started out as an anti-slavery party (disunity on this issue is why the Whigs fell apart in no small measure), but that issue did not bring about agreement on all issues.  Indeed, the GOP had a conservative and a liberal wing from the beginning.  We know Lincoln solely as a wartime President.  Whether Lincoln would be a Republican or a Democrat today would be easier to answer if ha had lived to be a peacetime President.

[NewYorkExpress]

The only reason people may not realize Lincoln was a Republican is that it’s so obvious he’d be a Democrat today, it hurts.

Democrats have long said this about Lincoln.  I am not convinced that this is the case.

Lincoln might well be a Charlie Baker/Larry Hogan Republican.  He was very much a strong Federal Government President, so he may well have been a Democrat today on that score.

As much as it pains me to agree with you Fuzzy, I believe you are correct. Lincoln probably would be very similar politically to Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan.

I will also say that if Lincoln went that route, he would not be a likely Presidential nominee.  Of course, I don't think Lincoln thought he'd be President in 1856, or even 1858.

The Republican Party of 1860 was a far more diverse group than what we have now.  The Party was less than 6 years old, and it was a coalition:

"We went into the little meeting held in a schoolhouse, Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Democrats. We came out of it as Republicans and we were the first Republicans in the union.

Lincoln was a former Whig.  As such, they were more in favor of chartering a Central Bank, and less liberal in terms of popular democracy than would be the average Democrat of the day.  Now the new Republican Party started out as an anti-slavery party (disunity on this issue is why the Whigs fell apart in no small measure), but that issue did not bring about agreement on all issues.  Indeed, the GOP had a conservative and a liberal wing from the beginning.  We know Lincoln solely as a wartime President.  Whether Lincoln would be a Republican or a Democrat today would be easier to answer if ha had lived to be a peacetime President.

Once again, it pains me to agree with you, but you are 100% correct here. We'd know a lot more about Lincoln's political stances if he'd survived to be a peacetime President. We do know he certainly wasn't a member of the Radical wing of the party on Reconstruction, like Thaddeus Stevens was. He wanted a more moderate course, and might have gotten bogged down in the same fighting Johnson did over that.

On the other hand, bring Lincoln to the present day...he'd be right at home with the War on Terror...but a lot of other issues Republicans make front and center in their platform, like abortion and same-sex marriage would seem foreign to him at best.

I don't think he'd win a Presidential nomination today...but assuming a Lincoln today takes similar positions to Larry Hogan/Charlie Baker, he might be able to win statewide office in Illinois.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

One issue that Lincoln disagreed with his party on, was immigration and that would certainly cause problems with the Trump era GOP.

The other thing to remember is that most all of his economic policies while economically nationalist (as noted he was a former whig), were all largely supported by business interests at the time. And as early as the 1870s, a lot of pro-labor and other anti-business Republicans who had just joined for the sake of opposing slavery began to leave and go back to the Democrats because they saw the GOP as too pro-business. Nathaniel P. Banks was the most prominent among these ex Democrats, turned Republicans, who then went back to the Democrats after the Civil War.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

One issue that Lincoln disagreed with his party on, was immigration and that would certainly cause problems with the Trump era GOP.

The other thing to remember is that most all of his economic policies while economically nationalist (as noted he was a former whig), were all largely supported by business interests at the time. And as early as the 1870s, a lot of pro-labor and other anti-business Republicans who had just joined for the sake of opposing slavery began to leave and go back to the Democrats because they saw the GOP as too pro-business. Nathaniel P. Banks was the most prominent among these ex Democrats, turned Republicans, who then went back to the Democrats after the Civil War.

Lincoln was not a Know-Nothing.  I would suspect that a degree of his position on immigration had to do with (A) the US being a frontier nation, (B) the need for labor for America's emerging heavy industries, and (C) a belief that immigrants would settle the new territories in such a manner to where they would undoubtedly oppose slavery.

How Lincoln would view today's immigration issues is a different story.  He'd be dealing with the issue today in an entirely different set of circumstances.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

One issue that Lincoln disagreed with his party on, was immigration and that would certainly cause problems with the Trump era GOP.

The other thing to remember is that most all of his economic policies while economically nationalist (as noted he was a former whig), were all largely supported by business interests at the time. And as early as the 1870s, a lot of pro-labor and other anti-business Republicans who had just joined for the sake of opposing slavery began to leave and go back to the Democrats because they saw the GOP as too pro-business. Nathaniel P. Banks was the most prominent among these ex Democrats, turned Republicans, who then went back to the Democrats after the Civil War.

Lincoln was not a Know-Nothing.  I would suspect that a degree of his position on immigration had to do with (A) the US being a frontier nation, (B) the need for labor for America's emerging heavy industries, and (C) a belief that immigrants would settle the new territories in such a manner to where they would undoubtedly oppose slavery.

How Lincoln would view today's immigration issues is a different story.  He'd be dealing with the issue today in an entirely different set of circumstances.

Context matters for everything.