The Lessons of Lincoln

In The New Republic, John Judis argues that Obama needs to take a closer look at Lincoln and his uncompromising acts of courage.

Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today’s Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

He also argues for Obama to exercise the 14th Amendment option.

His comparison of the 2011 Republican Party with the antebellum South Democrats pre-Civil War is rather chilling. And of course, the fact that it is our first black president experiencing an "insurrectionary party" comparable to the 1860s is a bitter repetition of history.