Do you know how/why Abraham Lincoln was elected President?

[ThomWV]

Lincoln was elected because the Democratic Parties vote was split between competing factions, the southern and northern Democrats. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in that race, but a Republican won.

Today's Tea-party is a monster created out of the flesh remaining on the corpse of a Party, desecrated by George Bush. The Tea party is nothing but a subset of the fading Republican Party, but its a subset that divides and weakens its parent. And what result will the Tea party have? Just think Lincoln in reverse and you've got it. The Tea party will be the death of the Republican Party. I know that's sort of obvious, but I thought it was about time someone said it.

[saltpoint]

1. ...and it's the kind of talk I like to hear.

Recommended.

[Jennicut]

2. Rethugs may fracture if they keep having internal fights.

Dems are used to internal conflict (when have Dems never not had that?). I am not sure Rethug leaders know what to do with the little teabagger monsters.

[saltpoint]

3. And may they have many internal fights -- may they have as many

internal fights as divisions their policies have caused over the last many years.

[lpbk2713]

4. Shhh. Don't tell them.

Let's let that be our little secret.

[el_bryanto]

5. Just like the New Left of the 1960s destroyed the Democratic Party

What goes around comes around.

Bryant

[tom_paine]

12. Really? You think the fact that the Dixiecrats defected en masse had something to do with it?

The Democrats made a Faustian bargain with the KKK-South for almost 100 years, turning a blind eye to it and enabling them against those "liberal Yankee & N-word loving Republicans".

Such was the ruthless and unending bitterness in the Confederate South over their loss in the Civil War which ocntinues to this day through those same Republicans.

Why? Because the Democratic Party's Liberalization was becoming more complete to the point where it could no longer stomach the KKK-South and actively began to fight against it's own previous Confederate/KKK "base".

So, it was the New Lefties, who you think destroyed the Democratic party, that actually redeemed it. By going into the Confederacy and riding those busses, getting firehosed and dog-bitten, jailed and murdered right alongside their African-American counterparts. By starting the environmental movement and many other things.

What "destroyed" the Democratic Party, relatively speaking, is when Raygun opened his arms in 1980 down in Philadelphia, Mississippi (where those three Yankee Liberals were murdered by KKK Confederate Dixiecrats) with his wink and nod to the former Dixiecrats, bringing them on board, thirsting for revenge against those "liberal Yankees" who were not Republicans anymore but FDR Democrats.

Personally, I would rather the New Left than a more dominant Democratic Party predicated on turning a blind eye to lynching, murder, and the closest thing to Nazi Germany the US has ever had: the KKK-dominated South 1866-1970 (even if they briefly faded occasionally during this period - their spirit still ruled the Old Confederacy, as you well know)

Just something to consider when you lay on us a one-liner like "just like the New Left destroyed the Democratic party in the '60s".

Yeah, they destroyed it: by standing up for what was right in the face of murderous, terroristic brutality.

Just something for you to consider, the Faustuian bargain the Democratic Party had with the KKK-Confederacy that bought Third World election results to the South for almost 100 years. Look up some of those old Confederate election results from 1866-1960 - it will make you think of Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler's "elections".

[el_bryanto]

13. That's the problem with brevity - sometimes you are not understood

What I meant was that of course the New Democrats didn't destroy the Demcoratic Party, just like Tea Partiers won't destroy the Republican Party.

Hard to argue with the bulk of your post - pretty accurate; I would state that the political philosophies "conservatism" and "liberalism" weren't tied to any party at that time. There were plenty of "liberal" or "progressive" Republicans and the Dixiecrats that your reference.

Bryant

[tom_paine]

15. Ah...now I understand. My bad. Also it is true what you say about the political philosophies of

that era.

As a CBS Correspondent returning from nazi Germany said, "The propaganda just sort of seeps in (to one's mind)."

I am not immune, nor is anyone, from the ridiculous RW linguistic frames the Corporate M$M sells us and propagandizes us with 24/7, and thus there is a tendency to view everything through the prism of ridiculous Corporate M$M/RW Lie Machine dichotomous nonsense, even when one knows it is often a facile view.

That's the power of propaganda of all types, which is that it attacks the subconscious, where it cannot be completely defended against.

Thanks for the clarification, bryant, and I hope you are well. :hi:

[AnArmyVeteran]

14. Lots of racist, southern whites turned republican in 68 and on...

The south used to be democrat, but they switched to beet red because of many factors, but racism and their love for war was another.

[Art_from_Ark]

6. You should include the Constitutional Union Party in your analysis

The Northern Democrats, whose candidate was Stephen Douglas (of Lincoln-Douglas debate fame), did not win a single state. The Southern Democrat, John Breckenridge, carried most of the Deep South, but some Southern states went for John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party, which was comprised of former Whigs and Know-Nothings, that is, future Republicans. Bell won some Southern states because he had promised to leave things as they were (which is basically what Breckenridge was promising).

[Hubert Flottz]

7. Good riddance...

America can't survive many more republican depressions, recessions, or preemptive wars based on bullshit!

The democrats need to put Americans back to work NOW repairing the neglected infrastructure. Shift the war dollars to better uses than protecting the wealthy bankster's interests abroad, from the shit they stir up abroad. Let Iraq rebuild Iraq, while we take care of taxpaying America's immediate needs.

[fadedrose]

8. Because that was the office he was running for ?? eom

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. It's the same reason GW Bush was selected. n/t

[pampango]

10. His opposition to the Know Nothings (the Tea Party's xenophobic predecessor) helped.

While serving as a state legislator in Illinois, Lincoln wrote a letter strongly condemning the popular anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party. "I am not a Know-Nothing," he wrote. "How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, ' all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for example, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

http://www.shmoop.com/early-american-immigration/abraham-lincoln.html

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values... Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one.

In spring 1855, Levi Boone was elected Mayor of Chicago for the Know Nothings. He barred all immigrants from city jobs. Statewide, however, Republican Abraham Lincoln blocked the party from any successes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing

[Recursion]

11. Not until they run candidates as a third party

Moving GOP candidates' rhetoric more frothingly to the right doesn't split the party, though it may alienate independents. What will kill the GOP (and this has happened to the past 2 conservative parties in the US, too) will be if/when Sarah Palin or somebody runs on a "Faith and Family Party" (or whatever) ticket.

[Bucky]

16. Okay, I get your point. Extreme ideological factionalism on the part of the more vocal party

[ChoppinBroccoli]

17. What Will REALLY Cook The Republican Party's Goose.........

............is the fact that they've got nothing in kitchen. Nothing but vacuous morons as far as the eye can see. They don't have a single viable Presidential candidate in the ENTIRE PARTY. Quite frankly, if Mitt Romney and Sarah Failin are the best you can do, you might as well run Bob Dole again, because it's gonna be a laugher. We could run John Edwards against Romney and Failin and still make it close. Point of order: I bet John Edwards would STILL beat Sarah Failin. THAT'S how bad things are for the Republicans right now.

[Golden Raisin]

18. I wouldn't be so quick

to sign the Death Certificate of the Republican Party.

[ThomWV]

19. I agree - it ain't goin' away - but we will never see it in the same form again

Something new that is something old will emerge from that mess. There is a place for conservative philosophy in politics. But I don't think for a moment that what passes for a Party now, be that the RNC or the Party of Tea will be up next.

My guess is they are going to find their savior in the Military, some retiring General, and the guy will portray himself - and it will be a "him" as the new Eisenhower. And then we will see where they go. Just a guess of course, but I don't really see any other path for them. If they don't go that way they will become the pet of the religious right, and that is another trail to eventual death for them.