re: #171 calcajun

Hoover, Eisenhower and even Nixon who brought national healthcare onto the political stage could hardly be considered in the same league as Taft or Coolidge when it came to GOP politics. Taft and Harding/Coolidge were flukes, and even Taft was at best lukewarm to business. The entire 20th century except for JFK’s and RWR’s tax cuts were big government full steam ahead, compared to the first half of our Republic’s history.

After WWII there was no repealing the New Deal. It attracted a lot of the black vote away from the Republicans. Kennedy/Johnson attracted even more of the black vote away from the Republicans (although not nearly as much as FDR did).

Nixon and his dog whistle Southern Strategy effectively finished the swapping of the electorate with the democrats.

As far as political ideology goes, the Democrats can claim Lincoln was a ‘Progressive’ all they want. I have read a lot about and of Lincoln and nothing I’ve read leads me to believe that he was “Progressive, read: Socialist”. Lincoln was more or less a Federalist, that split with that ideology on its anti-democratic views. Claiming that the logical conclusion of Federalism in the mid 19th century is a Socialist state today is simply false.

If more Federal power was good in 1860, that doesn’t equate to more Federal power is good all the time, and the Republicans of the day certainly did not believe that. Not to mention, the glaringly obvious fact that the progressive ideology today owes it’s roots to Karl Marx more than any home grown political philosophy.

Regardless, in reality just about every Republican sitting in office today except maybe Ron Paul is considerably to the Left of Lincoln in regards to the role of the government, military and economy. The Republican party of Lincoln wasn’t the servitor party of the black community. How many dark skinned people vote for the party today is not any kind of litmus test on the validity of their political views. That is all the article is. Counting heads of the correct color. How progressive.