How far the Republican Party has strayed from its roots. Not just because it has become the last refuge of intolerance and racism — after spearheading the war against African-American enslavement. It also has completely divorced itself from the spirit and thinking of its first elected President, Abraham Lincoln.
There are so many reasons that Lincoln would not be welcome in today's GOP, but we cats are particularly struck today by the notion of Lincoln's empathy. We know this from Doris Kearns Goodwin and other Lincoln scholars, who have documented the 16th President's unique ability to understand opponents' points of view.
As Goodwin wrote in Team of Rivals, Lincoln "possessed extraordinary empathy — the gift or curse of putting himself in the place of another, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires."
Does anyone in the Republican Party have this quality today? We cats think not. Because if they did, gun control legislation would be enjoying a cakewalk through Congress. Members would only need to hold meetings with Newtown, Connecticut parents, and look at pictures of the children slaughtered at Sandy Hook, and they would do the right thing. (Democrats, too.)
We cats hold onto the hope that, through their personal testimonies, the families of Sandy Hook will be able to forge change in Congress.
In the meantime, in the face of the NRA and its zillion-dollar lobbying campaign, we hope that our elected officials will remember this April that Abraham Lincoln, our most venerated President, was the victim of gun violence himself — and that, were he alive today, he would try to forge a compromise on the Second Amendment by appealing to the better angels of our nature.
IMAGE: Are we the only ones who think this 1864 portrait of Lincoln is incredibly sexy? Our phones are open!
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