The GOP s War of the Roses | Opinion On 2/1/21 at 5:30 AM EST
As pundits ponder the looming prospect of a Republican Civil War, they instinctively draw dire analogies with the cataclysmic conflict between Union and Confederacy some 160 years ago.
But to gain a more illuminating perspective on the bitter struggle within the GOP, analysts should go back four hundred years further and consider England s violent civil strife between 1455 to 1487, later designated the War of the Roses. In its cloddish pointlessness, its exclusive, self-destructive focus on power and personality to the exclusion of any issues of lasting significance, that medieval bloodbath presaged the take-no-prisoners fight among today s Republicans far more closely than more recent, issues-based struggles like the War Between the States.
We can escape ideological madness by convicting Trump
This path requires wisdom and courage by Republicans and Democrats.
By Adam Rowe
The Republicans in the winter of 1860-1861, even more than Democrats today, were terrified that their victory in the presidential election might be overthrown by a lawless attack on the nation’s capital.
Abraham Lincoln had won the election with just 40% of the popular vote. Very few major party candidates in American history have ever
lost a presidential election with such a low percentage of the vote. Southerners hotly announced their refusal to accept the results of the election. Organized resistance quickly acquired a revolutionary intensity that shocked everyone, even those who created it.
Updated:
January 17, 2021 08:13 IST
Republican insider Robert Zoellick underlines five themes that underpinned U.S. diplomacy in the past and will guide it in future, from stable alliances to innovation and trade
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Republican insider Robert Zoellick underlines five themes that underpinned U.S. diplomacy in the past and will guide it in future, from stable alliances to innovation and trade
“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults,” wrote the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville in the mid-19th century, in words that have acquired a new resonance this month after the brazen assault on the Capitol, the seat of American power.
When former Vice President Joe Biden is sworn in Wednesday as the 46th president of the United States, he would be wise to quote the words of President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural addresses of 1861 and 1865.
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This impeached, one-term president refused to go to his successor s inauguration. Now Trump will do the same.
Ronald G. Shafer, The Washington Post
Jan. 8, 2021
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The peeved president decided to skip his successor s inauguration ceremony.
The year was 1869, and the president was Andrew Johnson, who detested incoming President Ulysses S. Grant. The feeling was mutual. Grant refused to ride in the same carriage with Johnson to the Capitol.
Now the country faces a much uglier transfer of power between President Donald Trump, who maintains the election was stolen from him, and Joe Biden.
On Thursday night, as calls grew for his removal from office in the wake of a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, Trump finally acknowledged there will be a new president on Jan. 20 and pledged a smooth, orderly, seamless transition of power.