The GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln. Abe has been abandoned. Let us

[Pryderi]

draw up adoption papers and have an official ceremony making him a progressive democrat. Then we adopt Teddy Roosevelt and claim him as our own.

[white_wolf]

1. What about Eisenhower?

He wouldn't fit in very well with the modern GOP either.

[Pryderi]

3. Sure! Let's do it and watch the GOP lose their minds trying to defend their postions and policies

of today.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. stopped when they invited the Strom Thurmond wing into their fold.

[baldguy]

4. Hell, he doesn't even have a birth certificate.

[DJ13]

5. Posted a few days ago here on DU

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Now *that's* communicative.

I'm serious. Simple but eloquent.

[kenny blankenship]

7. It stopped being the party of Lincoln before his body cooled down to room temperature

Wars that consume the wealth of a nation always elevate some few connected people to great riches. Look up the names of munitions suppliers to the Federal side and you will see companies that are still today huge multinational chemical firms.
W.R. Grace
Dupont
The character of the Republican Party wasn't forged in the ending of slavery but rather in the wartime economy's funneling of immense wealth to the bank accounts of "strategic" industries and firms with vast govt contracts. Whatever Honest Abe thought his Republican party was about became utterly immaterial with one shot from the original Teabaggin' gunnut. With the South's hash settled, the new powers of industry and transport had all of the disputed territories at their feet and California besides. The bitter squabbling between North and South had retarded the development of a swathe of territory greater than the extant United States for decades. With the war finally fought and over, it was the mother of all "pent up demand" situations matched by an orgy of released supply. The Republicans became the debauched Party of Big Business practically overnight, and perhaps any party would have succumbed under the same ripe circumstances. For a time, after the end of the war won by the Northern side led by Republicans, only one party could be seen as legitimate (a point of pride that Republicans apparently became so used to that they seek to reassert it from generation to generation, for varying reasons as they go along). Nothing like the memory of one idealistic President of a party of midwestern farmers could hope to get in their way as they set up a government of the people by the rich for the rich. By the time of Grant's election, the corruption was solid from skin to bone, despite Grant's own unquestioned honesty. And the GOP have stayed that way ever since, always looking to war for the excuse to confiscate wealth from the many and award it to the few.