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Lincoln’s Lament - Abe's Party Is A House Divided
Cowboy Confessional ^ | 2/4/2013 | Guy Smith

Posted on 02/04/2013 11:15:44 AM PST by guyshomenet

Honest Abe hasn’t been resting in peace.

Abe’s institution of emancipation has devolved into a rancorous mess, with its members divided into three factions. Unlike their competitor party, which is 90% aligned on policy, the GOP has become an indoor shooting range. I have long said Republicans are marksmen because it takes this much skill to repeatedly shoot yourself in the foot.

The elephant’s carcass is carved-up into three hefty chunks. There is the Lincoln Legacy faction – the original progressives if you will – who have libertarian leanings. Marginalized for decades, they have recently been rejuvenated by the relative popularity of retiring Congressman Ron Paul and the “government shall obey” boost from the Tea Party (and to my left leaning Democrat friends here in San Francisco, do keep in mind that the Tea Party is non-partisan and has taken GOP scalps). This resurgence has caught the attention of the other two factions – the traditional (e.g. social) conservatives and the Neo Conservatives (right-leaning big government advocates).

The latter two factions are now running scared.

boehner-bozo-roveThe Lincoln Legacy clan has not only made some electoral strides, it has openly resisted the current leadership. Semi-famous are recent GOP bloodlettings whereby John “Bonehead” Boehner kicked certain congressmen from committees in retaliation for their open defiance of his dirty deficit dealings with Barack Obama. Seems that Republican Party leadership is more interested in power than traditional GOP principle.

Now the recently emasculated Karl Rove wants to help pummel Lincoln back into his grave. Not content to merely embarrass himself on election night by defying mathematical reality, Karl concludes he must wage war against the Abe’s Brigades. Thus Rove and other Super Pac players are banding to block outsider influence. Like his buddy Boehner, control is more important than preservation of the Republic or the Republican Party.

The Tea Party is squarely outside the control of the GOP’s hierarchy. While peddling books at a political gathering (the bane of us book writers) I had a chance to hear Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler talk about his encounter with Boehner. Once the Tea Party had traction, Meckler went to Boehner’s office to inform him of what the Tea Party intended to do. According to Meckler, Boehner grinned, took another drag from a cigarette (which he likely bummed from Obama) and asked “What do you want?” It was a nearly naked suggestion of a quid prop quo, a favor for a favor. Meckler said “Nothing,” a reply the likes of which Boehner had never before heard. Thus the relationship was cemented.

Now Boehner and Rove want to put the Tea Party in cement overshoes.

In the long run they will fail, and sadly the GOP will be unable to muster a meaningful response to newly invigorated socialists for some time. Just as the traditional media has lost its power to citizen’s media, so has the GOP leadership lost outreach to a younger generation of people willing to practice principle above all else (do remember that Paulineistas tend to be young, well organized, digitally savvy and overly energetic). Reason magazine, the bastion of libertarian logic, interviewed several new and reform-minded congress critters (March 2013 edition), one of whom was booted from his committee assignment by Boehner the Bogus. The common threads of their several interviews are of interest. First is that these representatives are consumed by constitutional fidelity and small government policy, even if it means upsetting the boss. Secondly, they have and maintain deep connections with their constituents, with one fellow – Justin Amash – dutifully explaining every vote he makes on Facebook to keep their constituents fully informed.

Yet the most interesting aspect is that the GOP’s wrath against principled players has been to make them local folk heroes. Instead of hindering the Tea Party or even non-tea Republicans, Boehner’s actions have guaranteed their reelection for years to come. Instead of removing opposition, Boehner has given Lincoln Legacy pachyderms nearly permanent status.

Not even Karl Rove and his contributors can overcome that.

Lincoln wisely noted that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Division on policy points is a mere family squabble. Midnight hatchet jobs against family members speaking their minds is division from within. Orchestrating their removal from the house is to create a broken home. If the GOP wishes to survive, grow and have a direction, then they must allow principles to win and that begins with avoiding exclusion.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: boehner; gop; rove

1 posted on 02/04/2013 11:15:50 AM PST by guyshomenet
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To: guyshomenet

I eagerly await a conservative party. When it officially comes into being, it will garner the great majority of the soon to be extinct Republican Party.

Rove and the RINOs can shove themselves up their own smelly Obamas.


2 posted on 02/04/2013 11:18:57 AM PST by Da Coyote
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To: guyshomenet

It should be noted how the Republican party in many states are effeectively a party captured by the Democrat Party as a sham opposition party. One way of identifying such GOP shams is to look at the party’s articles governing the organization. You look for the articles which restrict nominations of candidates to those approved by the Republican state leadership. All the Democrats need to do in such states is infiltrate their moles into the Republican leadership, and then they restrict nominations to only those candidates they approve from their own ranks. They then have Democrats vote as Republicans in the Republican caucuses and primaries to eliminate any non-Democrat approved Republicans. The Illinois Republican Party is an eample of this tactic. You can also find it in New York and a variety of other states.


3 posted on 02/04/2013 11:37:38 AM PST by WhiskeyX
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To: Da Coyote
When it officially comes into being, it will garner the great majority of the soon to be extinct Republican Party.

I wish this were the case; however, it would be a perpetual minority. The Dems want this more than you, I fear.

.

4 posted on 02/04/2013 11:42:18 AM PST by Seaplaner (Never give in. Never give in. Never...except to convictions of honour and good sense. W. Churchill)
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To: Seaplaner
it would be a perpetual minority.

We are already so whats to lose?

5 posted on 02/04/2013 12:18:11 PM PST by itsahoot (MSM and Fox free since Nov 1st. If it doesnÂ’t happen here then it didn't happen.)
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To: guyshomenet

It doesn’t take any skill whatsoever to shoot yourself in the foot. This guy is a bad writer.


6 posted on 02/04/2013 12:23:56 PM PST by Tublecane
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To: Seaplaner

I wish this were the case; however, it would be a perpetual minority. The Dems want this more than you, I fear.


They already have “IT”... Literally ALL conservative candidates were rejected in 2012... even the marginally conservative ones..

Chosen was the inventor of Romney-Care which was the model for Obama-Care.. Notice how Myth Romney has been very quiet lately?... Wouldn’t want to UPSTAGE his BOSS...

Slap Slap... Wake Up.. you’ve been sleeping..


7 posted on 02/04/2013 12:26:52 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: guyshomenet; All

Given that both parties ignore the Constitution, particularly state sovereignty, the two party system, supported by the corrupt media including Obama guard dog Fx News, is evidence that the Constitution has failed imo. All that the two-party system has done is to make misguided voters think that the Oval Office is a throne room, a throne room wrongly based on wronly usurped, 10th Amendment-protected state powers.

Regarding Abe and the Civil War, again, the very fact that the nation had a civil war means, to me anyway, that the great constitutonal experiment was over and had failed.

Sadly, it’s not that the Constitution didn’t work more than voters have never been taught the constitutonal division of federal and state powers evidenced by the Constitution’s Section 8 of Article I, Article V and the 10th Amendment. In other words, the two party system has tricked Constitution-ignorant citizens into abusing their voting power by turning the Oval Office into a throne room.


8 posted on 02/04/2013 1:15:38 PM PST by Amendment10
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To: guyshomenet

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”

by:

Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865) 16th US President
Source:

Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858
(The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, pp. 145-146.)


9 posted on 02/04/2013 1:28:07 PM PST by patriot08 (NATIVE TEXAN (girl type))
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To: Da Coyote

It’s funny that the author drapes the name of Lincoln over the Tea Party faction. If fidelity to the Constitution is a key issue for you (as it is with the Tea Party), then Abe Lincoln is probably not your hero. Lincoln did more to kill the Constitutional Republic than any two or three other Big Government advocates. Yes, even LBJ and FDR combined didn’t do as much damage as Abe.


10 posted on 02/04/2013 4:08:27 PM PST by Jack Black ( Whatever is left of American patriotism is now identical with counter-revolution.)
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