We all know by now that the Nixon’s Southern Strategy began to lock up the South and all its baggage with the Republican Party. Paul Krugman notes that 40 years later,even the Republican Party does not considers itself the Party of Lincoln.
But sooner or later, Republicans were bound to notice other reasons to disavow Lincoln. He was, after all, the first president to institute an income tax. And he was also the first president to issue a paper currency — the “greenback” — that wasn’t backed by gold or silver. “There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its people than to debase its currency,” declared Representative Paul Ryan in one of two hearings Congress held on Wednesday on monetary policy. So much, then, for the Great Liberator.