Comparison Between The 1864 and 2004 Elections--What do Bush and Lincoln have in Common

[sully777]

Different angle. Would Kerry fight WOT as McClellan fought Virginia and Maryland campaigns? Bottomline, if Kerry wins expect there to be much style with little substantial results leading to enormous loss of life.

[Protagoras]

Hopefully they don't have much in common. Lincoln was no friend to the constitution. And was a racist.

[traviskicks]

Lincoln was a subpar commander in chief IMO. His recycling and cycling of generals prolonged the war and led to countless deaths. Indecision is sometimes worse then a wrong decision. Bush is very resolute.

[Little Ray]

I hope they don't have Ford Theatre in common...

[GOPcapitalist]

In 1864 they were perfectly willing to look past the issue of slavery if it was in their interest

In 1861 Lincoln was perfectly willing to look past the issue of slavery if it was in his interest and even proposed a constitutional amendment permanently protecting it. You are also incorrect about the European press' monolithic support for the south. There was actually a pronounced division in the European press. Most of the mainstream supported the south, but several prominent European writers embraced the Lincoln-yankee cause. The leader of this second group was a German pamphleteer living in London named Karl Marx and he wrote about a hundred major newspaper editorials, petitions, and announcements espousing Lincoln's cause in between 1860 and 1865.

[GOPcapitalist]

I believe that Europe backed the South because they wanted to slow the US economy, the engine of which was in the North with the banks.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Europeans who backed the south did so primarily because the south was in favor of free trade while the north was protectionist. Put another way, the north was heavily penalizing european goods with extravagent taxes to support a tax-and-spend government mentality. Seeing their trade cut off in the north, the European commercial interests started rooting for the south, which was willing to engage in free trade with them.

[GOPcapitalist]

Why so many Bush/Lincoln comparison's lately?

It's symptomatic a conscious attempt by the Claremont wing of the GOP to reshape the party in a new direction. From 1964 to 2000 the Republican Party was fundamentally a Goldwater mechanism. Its anchor was in the south and the great plains and its politics were built upon liberty-minded conservatism (or small L fiscal libertarianism combined with moral conservatism).

From 2000 on the Claremont types of this world have been trying to change the GOP from the "Party of Goldwater" into th "Party of Lincoln." They do so because they've caught the big government bug - they've tasted the power of the state now that we're in control and they like that power so they try to find a way to justify it remaining in their hands. Since that vision is incompatable with the anti-government Goldwater philosophy Goldwater gets shunned. They cast out in search of a replacement - an ideological hero who is compatable with big government - and in doing so they find themselves at the alter of Saint Abe.

As an added bonus - even though we know that the real Saint Abe was an unmitigated flaming bigot, the mythical Saint Abe is not. The mythical Saint Abe is a paragon of "tolerance" and and all the other liberal PC buzz words that are popular these days - a true diversitopian. The same GOP forces who wish to shun Goldwater have also caught that same PC bug from the leftist big government types via the "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas" method. So they promote an agenda of affirmative action-lite, ramadama-ding-dong "religion of peace" catering, kwanzaa-embracing, "civil unions" as an alternative to homo marriage-touting, PC garbage because they think they can get some sort of mythical nonexistant voting advantage from it.

There's a fork in the path of the Republican Party of today. One is the limited government Goldwater route. The other is the big government Lincoln route and we're starting to veer that way, which is inescapably the wrong direction.

[Gianni]

You didn't get invaded last time, either. We did.

Yeah, but this time we have a Texan in the White House!

As far as the invasion of the commies, being in a battleground state has made the election rather tiresome. Regardless of outcome, next Tuesday the bombardment will cease!