Happy 210th Birthday Abraham Lincoln! n/t

[Yavin4]

[Harker]

1. He looks pretty good

for his age.

[zipplewrath]

2. 201th

How do we pronounce that?

Howz 'bout 201st?

[Yavin4]

4. Sorry, my dyslexia kicked in there.

It's 210th.

[Dennis Donovan]

3. But he was a Republican!

...back when Republicans were the good guys.

[ginnyinWI]

6. The parties are completely flipped around now.

The Democrats back in that day were the conservatives, and the Republicans were progressive. So Lincoln was a progressive. Unfortunately he had Andrew Johnson as his vice president, on a unity ticket, as a conservative.
Then when Lincoln was assassinated, all hell broke loose because Johnson as a conservative sought to undermine everything Lincoln had done or tried to do like the 14th Amendment. The Congress was also Republican and approved the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act and renewal of the Freedman's Bureau Bill. He vetoed but they overrode his vetos, twice. He was actually a white supremacist.

[Dennis Donovan]

7. It flipped with FDR

...who didn't have a clean record on civil rights, by any means. But his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, MORE THAN made up for that shortcoming.

[Yavin4]

8. It actually flipped with LBJ

That was the real break. The Republican party was founded on ending slavery, and they went beyond that. They demanded more reparations to former slaves. To many Republicans, Reconstruction did not go far enough.

Reconstruction was supplanted by Jim Crow laws which were eventually over-turned by Johnson's Civil and Voting rights legislation. From then on, the two parties exchanged places.

The lesson in all of this is that race determines politics in America. Always have and always will.

[dalton99a]

5. "He is being recognized more and more - but not as good as ME"