As President Donald Trump prepared to go to Tulsa for his Saturday rally, Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma proclaimed that “no question this is …
As President Donald Trump prepared to go to Tulsa for his Saturday rally, Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma proclaimed that “no question this is still the Party of Lincoln.”
Well, Senator Lankford, I have news for you: Today’s GOP, led by Trump, is not the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. In fact, it is not the party of Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan, either.
Instead, it is a party increasingly dominated by activists who are overwhelmingly white, always aggrieved, virulently militant about the Second Amendment (and their rights not to wear a face mask during a pandemic), pro-Confederacy and openly racist. That is your party, senator.
Let’s be clear. This is not the party that began in 1854 as a pro-abolitionist, anti-slavery party. This is not the party that freed the slaves or passed the 13th,14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. No, this is not the party whose leaders won the Civil War, fought the Klan, and ushered in Reconstruction. This is not the party that welcomed Booker T. Washington to the White House or used federal troops in 1957 to integrate Little Rock High.
This is not the party, led by Everett Dirksen in the Senate, that helped pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s. Sadly, this Republican Party has within its elected ranks only one Black senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and one Black member of the House, Will Hurd of Texas. Hurd announced he was retiring in 2020, and Scott has said that if he runs for re-election in 2022, it will be his final term.
No, this is not your great grandfather’s or even your grandfather’s Republican Party. This Republican Party will be the first-ever to openly and proudly stain Lincoln’s legacy and embrace instead the traitors of Southern rebellion that sought to divide and destroy the Union our Founding Fathers established in 1776.
