The Trump-Lincoln Debate

"This is not a party, this is a cult... Rick Perry said Trump was the chosen one. And he wasn’t even the first person to say that." - Leonard Pitts responds to poll in which 53% of Republicans said Trump was a better president than Lincoln. https://t.co/mHgleZJZir

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 30, 2019

The idea that 53% of Republicans in a recent poll think that Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln actually doesn't bother me excessively because I drink an actual fuckton anymore have been watching Republican polls for a long time, and have observed the rise of poll-trolling and troll-polling. You know, the thing where Republicans, when questioned, will blame Obama for the Hurricane Katrina response or where pollsters will ask questions trying to cast a certain demographic (presumed knuckle-draggers) in a weird light by pointing up one weird and very click-baitable response. You can tell me Republicans by just 53% are defensive enough in support of Trump to compare him favorably to the guy on Mount Rushmore, the $5 bill and the freaking penny, and I'm going to basically shrug. (I will note, however, for posterity's sake, that Trump invited this comparison. And outside of Republicans, he definitely does not compare favorably.)

Republicans are going to like the current Republican president. It isn't brain science. Lincoln was broke as far as presidents go, pissed off the entire south, and was nearly a Commie.

There is something kind of weird about the idea that Republicans have that Trump is the particular right man of this given moment of history, though; that he is the Chosen One. Sometimes, even secularly, the sweep of history is defined by the idea of "Great men". But the current trend seems to be thinking that Trump was called to public service and has sacrificed things to be here--quite different from the reality of Trump's various buckrakings. He hasn't really accomplished anything great. The economy is just generally good, as it was under the last guy, and otherwise Trump's foreign policy is nonsense.

He could very well lead to a civil war of some kind, though, so there is that. I would not call that a "feature" though. Definitely a drawback. Not good.