GOP should embrace its liberal past

— Abraham Lincoln

What has happened to the Party of Lincoln?

By most historic accounts, Abraham Lincoln liked to give careful, meaningful consideration to issues without offering knee-jerk responses or bowing to passionate partisans.

Lincoln made a habit of deeply studying difficult problems, from secession to slavery, and even set about to learn the intricacies of military strategy that left him as qualified as any West Point grad of the time to manage the Civil War.

At the time, the biggest criticism to Lincoln came from a group of Radical Republicans who believed Lincoln was proceeding too cautiously with respect to abolition.

It’s hard to imagine how Lincoln would view his own party today. If he were watching, he’d see a political process that’s meant to divide in such a way that nothing gets done. And the GOP that celebrates the 16th president as its founder, proceeds today more along the lines of the Party of Norquist.

Harry Reid is fond of saying he would be able to negotiate with moderate Republicans, but that, “There aren’t any.”

Whether you want to call impending GOP nominee John McCain moderate or maverick, he’s still light years to the right of Lincoln. It’s hard to imagine Lincoln ever wanting to proceed on a course for a 100-year war.

The great irony is that McCain is too liberal for most conservatives. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter cannot stop freaking out about the guy. McCain’s wrong on immigration, wrong on campaign finance, wrong on tax cuts, wrong for America, they say … loudly.

The party of Norquist gives McCain comparatively poor ratings as a fiscal conservative. Grover’s group, Americans for Tax Reform, suggests on its Web site that McCain has only recently improved his ratings to coincide with this presidential bid. There’s also heresy in McCain’s positions, according to the ATR Web site. “McCain does not support permanent repeal of the estate tax, a major goal of the taxpayer movement,” it says. “McCain has told reporters ‘off the record’ that he would raise taxes if elected president.”

One thing is certain on the Lincoln Day circuit in Nevada this year is that the taxpayer movement will get warm response. It ain’t called Gibbons Country for nothing. And assuming Gov. Jim Gibbons makes the rounds to the various dinners and breakfasts in the 17 counties, he’ll be sure to hit RoboGov mode stressing that he’s keeping his promise and won’t raise taxes.

Sharron Angle, who’s only befitting Lincoln in her doggedness, returns to once again try to turn Nevada into California.

So far her efforts to impose Prop. 13 have failed three times and she lost a race for Congress. She’s still got some way to go to catch Lincoln. He lost seven elections before winning the presidency. But Angle’s initiative to limit property tax increases to 2 percent a year still hasn’t made the ballot. She’s expected back in court today to try to fend off a suit from the AFL-CIO over the constitutionality of her initiative.

Angle’s initiative mirrors California’s Prop. 13, which after it passed in 1978, led to more ballot initiatives seeking to make up the loss in revenue to local governments and school districts. California’s incredible and cyclical budget deficit is largely attributed to the fact that more than 50 percent of the state’s budget is committed to initiatives passed by the voters.

Gibbons recently decried the sad state of Nevada’s economy by offering hope. “At least we’re not California or Michigan,” he told the Review-Journal’s editorial board.

But you can bet that out on the hustings in Elko or White Pine County, he’ll pay credit to Angle as a true friend to taxpayers … just like he is. There won’t be any talk of how bad things are in California, or more importantly, why.

In the editorial board meeting Gibbons talked about scraping the bottom of the barrel to do something to securitize the looming deficits in the public employees benefit program. Last year he earmarked $30 million toward the $3 billion.

He also talked about edging toward solutions to the $6 billion to $9 billion transportation construction deficit. Gibbons then touted his school empowerment program and said: “We hope there’ll be some more money for education.”

As long as the Nevada GOP is more comfortable just bowing to the will of retirees from California, there won’t be room for any Lincoln pragmatism on taxes and budgets.

And as long as the national Republican Party decries its liberal heritage as evil, a real conservative such as John McCain will be as much an outcast to the party as Abraham Lincoln.

Contact Erin Neff at eneff@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2906.