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Sarah Palin has rebuked Obama for comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln:
Obama:"Lincoln-they talked about himAs usual, Gov. Palin's appraisal is spot on. As John J. Miller points out, there's no comparison. The Hillsdale College professor and author of The First Assassin, a well-regarded novel about Lincoln and the Civil War, says Obama has yet to suffer anything remotely akin to the enmity Lincoln endured. The humble man from Kentucky was the most loathed of all the American presidents:
almost as bad as they talk about me"
Mr. Pres- tour Lincoln Museum anti-
Abe display;try repeating claim
The vitriol began even before he was elected. After securing the Republican nomination in 1860, he was branded the “Black Republican.” Southern newspapers obsessed over his physical appearance. He was “the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs and arms and hatchet face ever strung on a human frame” and “a horrid looking wretch . . . sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper and the night man.”For Obama to claim that he has had it almost as bad as Lincoln reveals not just a stunning ignorance of American history, but the kind of arrogance not seen in the White House since Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson.
They didn’t like his views any better. Lincoln was “a blood-thirsty tyrant,” a “border ruffian” and “a vulgar mobocrat.” An Alabama group proposed a motto: “Resistance to Lincoln is obedience to God.” Throughout the emerging Confederacy, Lincoln was burned in effigy. His name didn’t even appear on Southern ballots.
Lincoln won the election anyway and tried to reassure Southerners about his intentions. In the grip of secessionist hysteria, they refused to hear him. His speeches, spewed a Louisiana editorialist, demonstrate “profound ignorance,” display “dishonest and cowardly efforts to dodge responsibility” and “have no equals in the history of any people, civilized or semi-civilized.”
Following Lincoln’s inauguration, the Charleston Mercury dubbed the new president “the Ourang-Outang at the White House.” Others called him “the Illinois Ape,” a “Baboon,” and “the original gorilla.” A Virginia congressman called him “a cross between sandhill crane and an Andalusian jackass.” This was their colorful way of saying that Lincoln was less than human.
As the nation descended into Civil War, the loathing continued. Cartoonists depicted Lincoln as a drunk. Some portrayed him as a vampire or the devil.
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- JP
While I look forward to Sarah Palin offering more substantive policy discussions as she has so often in the past, she is pointing out something that needs to be pointed out here. President Obama is no President Lincoln. And you don't elevate yourself to that category by a self-imposed comparison. That's arrogance. Furthermore, the comparison is not justified.
ReplyDeleteMy only concern is that it will not help her with respect to media perception and therefore media spin. They'll perceive it as sniping. Timing her potential entry into the race with a heavy fiscal policy position (granted that would come later, not now) will hopefully be the approach she takes if she is running. I see huge opportunity for her in that sort of approach, particularly if she can time her position 'paper' after Obama finally comes up with his idea in a month or so, and yet not be too late to effectively enter the race.
She will have the advantage of Obama trotting out his tired Keynesian solutions and will be able to contrast it with her own more substantive ideas.