What Happened To The Party of Lincoln?

01What happened to the GOP?   When did they merge with the Democratic Party?   Neil Cavuto of Fox Business,  after watching Spelberg’s “Lincoln,” had a few choice words for the GOP.

“So I finally got around to seeing Steven Spielberg’s movie, “Lincoln.” And it hit me: Forget about Harry Reid gathering his Democratic buddies to see this flick in the congressional auditorium on our dime. Republicans should run to their nearest theater to see it for themselves… on theirs.

Maybe then they’ll see their future.

Looking to Lincoln, our first Republican president, and remembering their past. A time when Republicans weren’t just pro-business, they were pro-people. A party that came into existence opposing slavery, now enslaved to the notion it’s a party of old, white men.

Think about that — a party that had “emancipation” in its DNA, now deemed a political dinosaur and all but DOA.   It doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t make sense that a party that defined itself providing opportunity for all now gets bested by another party pushing government for all.

How did that happen?

How did a party founded by disgruntled northern white protestants and African-Americans, and under whose tent you had everyone from farmers to factory workers back then become this mish-mash it is now?

Watching “Lincoln,” I was reminded about a time when Republicans stood for opportunity for all and a president risked his very office enshrining it in our Constitution. Forget about what’s happened to our Constitution, what’s happened to theirs?

What’s happened to Republicans?

What happened to the party that extolled the benefits of business, but not so blindly that under Theodore Roosevelt, wasn’t afraid to rein in the abuses of business?

What happened to that party that pushed to keep our food safe and our environment clean? That could distinguish between regulations that mattered to life and not the onslaught of meaningless ones taxing business to death?

That could discern the difference between a smart government and an excessive government?

That brought us our national parks and protected our national workers?

What happened to that party? That party whose first slogan was “free soil, free silver, free men”?    Now, more like freefall.

It’s not that Republicans don’t know their future. They’ve forgotten their past and what should be in their soul. A party that defined itself not by what it could give you, but the boundary-less opportunities this country could provide you.

The Abraham Lincoln I saw in that movie spoke of a time when Republican ideals weren’t a movie and their idealism wasn’t just a script. It was their core. It was real. Abraham Lincoln was real.

Forget about Harry Reid trying to show Democrats a movie that provided a lesson in backbone. How about Republicans watch it on their own and then maybe look in the mirror.”

The only thing I could add to that is AMEN!

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