Can you imagine what America's first Republican president must be thinking right now? He presided over the seccession of the southern states and the north's ultimate victory. He spent a lot of political capital when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation and made slavery a central issue of the conflict.

Until the Proclamation, most of the conflict was about the conflict between the agrarian economy in the south and the rapidly industrializing northern economy. Of course slavery was part and parcel of the southern economy of 1861, but emancipation was a political non-starter. In fact, Lincoln himself was for slavery before he was against it (see Zinn and others on this).

But at the end of the day, President Lincoln went out on several politically-teneble limbs to do what we look back on today as the right thing. He payed a pretty steep price for that political calculation, but it was a monumental progressive step at the time.

Contrast that with our (hopefully) final Republican president. While his predecessor gave his life so poor black and brown folks could have the liberty they deserved, the guy we have now is more interested in saving his political hide at the expense of poor black and brown folks while paying empty lip service to the concept of liberty.

I say more power to Kanye West for using the platform he was given to tell it like it is.

One thing is clear: the Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln. Heck, it's not even the party of Goldwater anymore.