How would Lincoln vote today?

[wyldwolf]

Of course, no one really knows, but on some key issues, the answer may be obvious. (old article I dug up)

Many of the issues of the mid-19th century — from the role of the federal government in the economy to whether America is a Christian nation to evolution vs. creationism — remain issues in the early 21st century.

In his first campaign manifesto of 1832, the young Whig Party politician declared: “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.” In short, Lincoln was in favor of a strong federal government that actively promoted American infrastructure and manufacturing.

Would Lincoln join today’s Republicans in calling for more tax cuts as the answer to every problem? President Lincoln signed the bills creating the IRS and the first U.S. income tax.

What would Abraham Lincoln think of the religious right in today’s Republican Party — and more to the point, what would the religious right think of him? According to his law partner William Herndon, in 1834 Lincoln wrote “a little book on infidelity” in which he questioned “the divinity of Christ — Special Inspiration — Revelation &c.” He reluctantly burned it, when his friends warned him it would damage his career. During the same year, the young Whig politician criticized supporters of the Democrat Peter Cartwright, an evangelist turned politician like Mike Huckabee, as “in some degree priest-ridden.” When he ran for Congress in 1846, Lincoln was accused by the religious right of the day of being an infidel; his reply was a classic of politically motivated equivocation: “That I am not a member of any Christian Church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular.”

Lincoln’s speeches were deeply influenced by the King James Bible, and as the costs of the Civil War mounted he dwelled on the mysteries of Providence. According to his closest associates, however, he never became a Christian. “He had no faith in the Christian sense of the term — had faith in laws, principles, effects and causes,” observed David Davis, a longtime friend whom Lincoln appointed to the Supreme Court. His law partner John Todd Stewart wrote: “He was an avowed and open infidel and sometimes bordered on atheism … went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard; he shocked me … Lincoln always denied that Jesus was the Christ of God — denied that Jesus was the son of God as understood and maintained by the Christian Church.”

More...

http://www.salon.com/2009/02/12/lincoln_bicentennial/

[John2]

1. Seeing

how Lincoln was the first standard bearer of the Republican Party, I think the question is wrong. Would Lincoln accept people currently in the Republican Party? I think not because many of them don't represent Lincoln's Party. My position is they hijacked the Republican Party. The Republican Party is also the Party of radical abolitionists. I doubt any of them would have got along with the current inhabitants of the Republican party which now is mostly a Southern Party. They probably would have disavowed today's Republican Party just as much as they hated the southern democrats of the Confederacy.