The Republicans Haven't Had Anything To Do With Lincoln For Longer Than Anyone Alive Today Remembers

I don't remember much from elementary school-- being a crossing guard, discovering why big guys could bully smaller guys, a few friends, a few teachers, my Spanish teacher outing me in Spanish many years before I had figured out I was gay... And one thing I'll never forget was an elderly woman coming to address the assembly. Back then, PS 197-- Bernie was a student there too but a couple of years before me-- was all white, just Jews and Italians and a few Irish as I remember. But the elderly woman wasn't memorable because she was black. She was memorable because of what she had to say to us. She had come to talk to us about her childhood, having been born a slave. Her face and her voice were indelibly etched into my brain. A slave... My thoughts before that day about slaves was about Jews building the pyramids and escaping from Egypt whenMoses parted the Red Sea. This woman was born when Lincoln was president.

She died very soon afterward, one of the last people on earth who had been alive when Lincoln-- who many historians consider the greatest of all presidents (although many Trumpists consider him nothing compared to The Donald)-- was in office. Lincoln had saved our country from the Trumpists of the day by successfully prosecuting the Civil War. He had freed the slaves from bondage with an executive order-- and later forced a reluctant Congress to pass the 13th Amendment, making it permanent, official and forever. Lincoln was the first president to order the use of paper currency and to enact an income tax, neither popular among conservatives, to put it mildly. It began as a flat tax of 3% on incomes above $800 ($22,300 in current dollar terms and a year later reconfigured as a progressive tax. He also passed the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, beginning the free state university system Bernie is campaigning on reinstating (as violently opposed by conservatives of both parties today-- especially the Republicans-- as it was a century and a half ago).




Like I said, the Republican Party today-- even before the South managed to win the Civil War by putting Trump into the White House-- has nothing at all to do with Abraham Lincoln. But this week we saw the beginning of a some #NeverTrumpers begin what they're calling the Lincoln Project. They kicked it off yesterday with an OpEd by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson in the NY Times-- We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated "The president and his enablers have replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet." They want to bring the GOP back to Reagan though, not Lincoln.

Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.

That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values, and its people’s sacrifices and obligations. This effort transcends partisanship and is dedicated to nothing less than preservation of the principles that so many have fought for, on battlefields far from home and within their own communities.

This effort asks all Americans of all places, creeds and ways of life to join in the seminal task of our generation: restoring to this nation leadership and governance that respects the rule of law, recognizes the dignity of all people and defends the Constitution and American values at home and abroad.

Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line. We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.

The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion, with turnout expected to be at record highs. Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House.

The American presidency transcends the individuals who occupy the Oval Office. Their personality becomes part of our national character. Their actions become our actions, for which we all share responsibility. Their willingness to act in accordance with the law and our tradition dictate how current and future leaders will act. Their commitment to order, civility and decency are reflected in American society.

Mr. Trump fails to meet the bar for this commitment. He has neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve. His vision is limited to what immediately faces him-- the problems and risks he chronically brings upon himself and for which others, from countless contractors and companies to the American people, ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

But this president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities.

Indeed, national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.

Congressional Republicans have embraced and copied Mr. Trump’s cruelty and defended and even adopted his corruption. Mr. Trump and his enablers have abandoned conservatism and longstanding Republican principles and replaced it with Trumpism, an empty faith led by a bogus prophet. In a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters reported that they consider Mr. Trump a better president than Lincoln.

Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers daily undermine the proposition we as a people have a responsibility and an obligation to continually bend the arc of history toward justice. They mock our belief in America as something more meaningful than lines on a map.

Our peril far outstrips any past differences: It has arrived at our collective doorstep, and we believe there is no other choice. We sincerely hope, but are not optimistic, that some of those Republicans charged with sitting as jurors in a likely Senate impeachment trial will do likewise.

American men and women stand ready around the globe to defend us and our way of life. We must do right by them and ensure that the country for which they daily don their uniform deserves their protection and their sacrifice.

We are reminded of Dan Sickles, an incompetent 19th-century New York politician. On July 2, 1863, his blundering nearly ended the United States.

(Sickles’s greatest previous achievement had been fatally shooting his wife’s lover across the street from the White House and getting himself elected to Congress. Even his most fervent admirers could not have imagined that one day, far in the future, another incompetent New York politician, a president, would lay claim to that legacy by saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.)

On that day in Pennsylvania, Sickles was a major general commanding the Union Army’s III Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg, and his incompetence wrought chaos and danger. The Confederate Army took advantage, and turned the Union line. Had the rebel soldiers broken through, the continent might have been divided: free and slave, democratic and authoritarian.

Another Union general, Winfield Scott Hancock, had only minutes to reinforce the line. America, the nation, the ideal, hung in the balance. Amid the fury of battle, he found the First Minnesota Volunteers.

They charged, and many of them fell, suffering a staggeringly high casualty rate. They held the line. They saved the Union. Four months later, Lincoln stood on that field of slaughter and said, “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration. He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome.

Over the weekend, Syacuse's Post Standard, the biggest newspaper in John Katko's district, laid into the congressman in no uncertain terms. Calling for impeachment, the editorial board thundered that "Katko has said he will vote 'no' on impeaching the president. That is a mistake, and history will judge it harshly. We remind lawmakers on both sides that they swore an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.' The oath does not say, 'unless the political consequences are too great.' Do your constitutional duty. Vote 'yes' to impeach President Trump. Let the president defend his corrupt actions. Then let the Senate carry out its constitutional duty."

The photo of the Times Square billboard up top-- put there by another group of Republican #NeverTrumpers, Republicans for the Rule of Law, is not related to the Lincoln Project per se. The ad-- which has also been placed in 9 congressional districts represented by Republicans who know Trump should be impeached but are too craven and cowardly to put country before party: Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), John Katko (R-NY), Martha Roby (R-AL), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Greg Walden (R-OR, Michael McCaul (R-TX), Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Paul Mitchell (R-MI). The ad features Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, each whom refuses to testify in the impeachment hearings, despite subpoenas. Yesterday ABC News and the Washington Post published a poll by Langer Research showing that 71% of Americans-- including 64% of Republicans and 72% of independents-- want Trump to allow these top aides to testify.

One day before the Lincoln Project op-ed, 752 prominent historians signed a statement on the impeachment of Señor Trumpanzee. "We are American historians devoted to studying our nation’s past," they wrote, "who have concluded that Donald J. Trump has violated his oath to 'faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States' and to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' His 'attempts to subvert the Constitution,' as George Mason described impeachable offenses at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, urgently and justly require his impeachment."

President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president. Among those most hurtful to the Constitution have been his attempts to coerce the country of Ukraine, under attack from Russia, an adversary power to the United States, by withholding essential military assistance in exchange for the fabrication and legitimization of false information in order to advance his own re-election.

President Trump’s lawless obstruction of the House of Representatives, which is rightly seeking documents and witness testimony in pursuit of its constitutionally-mandated oversight role, has demonstrated brazen contempt for representative government. So have his attempts to justify that obstruction on the grounds that the executive enjoys absolute immunity, a fictitious doctrine that, if tolerated, would turn the president into an elected monarch above the law.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, impeachment was designed to deal with “the misconduct of public men” which involves “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Collectively, the President’s offenses, including his dereliction in protecting the integrity of the 2020 election from Russian disinformation and renewed interference, arouse once again the Framers’ most profound fears that powerful members of government would become, in Hamilton’s words, “the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.”

It is our considered judgment that if President Trump’s misconduct does not rise to the level of impeachment, then virtually nothing does.

Hamilton understood, as he wrote in 1792, that the republic remained vulnerable to the rise of an unscrupulous demagogue, “unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents…despotic in his ordinary demeanour.” That demagogue, Hamilton said, could easily enough manage “to mount the hobby horse of popularity-- to join in the cry of danger to liberty-- to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion-- to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day.” Such a figure, Hamilton wrote, would “throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

President Trump’s actions committed both before and during the House investigations fit Hamilton’s description and manifest utter and deliberate scorn for the rule of law and “repeated injuries” to constitutional democracy. That disregard continues and it constitutes a clear and present danger to the Constitution. We therefore strongly urge the House of Representatives to impeach the President.

Me The People by Nancy Ohanian