Memphis Daily Appeal Quotes
Within 90 days from the time Lincoln that is inaugurated, the Republican Party will be utterly ruined and destroyed. His path is environed with so many difficulties, that even if he had the ability of Jefferson and the energy of Jackson, he would fail, but he is a weak and inexperienced man, and his administration will be doomed from the commencement. If he takes that radical section of the Republican Party, the conservative wing of it will cut loose and repudiate him. If, on the other hand, he courts the conservatives and pursues a moderate conciliatory policy, the radicals will make open war upon his administration.
Lecture, FDR Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY, June 24, 2006
This was the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The men were contesting for the U. S. Senate. Douglas won the election. Lincoln was one of the new Republicans, a third party that had been formed by appealing to people who had been dissatisfied with either of the two major parties—the Whigs and the Democrats—and joined the new Party. Neither of the two traditional parties could just cope with .the national polarization caused by the slavery issue. They had “kicked the can down the road” until there was violence breaking out in Kansas and elsewhere.
The Republican candidates were campaigning for the Primary election in Illinois. Lincoln was the first and the greatest of the Republican Presidents and a great liberal. The Republicans used to be the more liberal of the two American major parties and even referred to themselves as “radicals.” However the political parties flip flopped over time and in the 2012 primary campaign the Republican candidates were outdoing each other to show who was the most conservative and could trash liberals the most. Pointing out this contradiction between the politics of the first and most popular Republican President and the then current crop of contenders was a little embarrassing to some Republicans and a powerful anti-current Republican message to independents and Democrats.
The 2014 House of Representatives was probably the worst in American History. The Republican Speaker of the House did not have any control over the Tea Party wing of his caucus, but they controlled him in most instances. Even when he made bargains with the President and the Democrats, he could not get his caucus to go along. Almost no legislation was passed and the few bills that were passed were symbolic, were never considered by the Senate and the President did not even have to exercise his power of veto during that Congress.
The Tea Party Republican faction was opposed to government doing much of anything other than Defense and Foreign Policy. The regular Republicans saw a much more extensive and robust role of government though few did so to the same extent as Abraham Lincoln and the other founders of the Republican Party, and Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower the Republicans following in the Alexander Hamilton tradition.
Reporting on public dissent following Abraham Lincoln's election.
The Memphis Daily Appeal was published from 1847-1886 in Memphis, TN. See more information about this newspaper {here|link=38945}.
