Would Lincoln be a Republican or Democrat?

>>1882610
It's pretty stupid to liken things to modern times, given the completely different social contexts and this particular question's entanglement with current fractured and stagnant party politics.
But to answer your question, be would probably be a left of center democrat.

>>1882618
Could you use policy examples to support your opinion?

I understand that they'll be drastically different from today's political issues but the frame work should have some resemblance to modern political issues.

>>1882610

Lincoln would be leftwing because he is a lawyer

>>1882610
>is the whole "the parties switched during the LBJ era" thing just a bullshit meme
Yes.

>>1882610
He'd be voting for Donald Trump

The idea that the parties switched during the LBJ era is a massive simplification but it's not wrong. It's basically true that Southern populists and states' rights folks and white supremacists switched over from being conservative Democrats to being Republicans, and that this led to a broader realignment of the party system.

>>1882618
This is a good answer

>>1882682
It's fuckin' hard as hell because the underlying ideologies are also different - in particular, like, the coalition that Lincoln was at the head of was pretty anomalous even at the time. And there's two or three total overturnings of the ideological framework of American politics between us and them.

One way of understanding this is to understand Lincoln's Republican Party as a reasonably classic 19th century liberal party in an American context - connected to manufacturing, finance, and trade; in favor of centralization, the federal government, internal improvements, against slavery. And the thing is that liberalism basically fractures after 1900, and divides into a more conservative section which becomes the standard old-school establishment mainstream Republican ideology, with people like Rockefeller on the very left of it, and a more progressive section which embraces governmental and financial reform and welfare state principles and stuff, and (after a bunch of internal battles and third party fights and stuff) leaves the Republicans and joins the Democrats in the New Deal Coalition. And there's just not really any reasonable way to answer the question of which of those paths Lincoln might have gone down, because the choices weren't apparent at the time.

In the context of his time? The Republican Party of his day was much more analogous to the modern Democratic Party. But even then, it's just not that meaningful of a comparison, and ultimately Lincoln is so broad and important and American a statesman it's probably better to appreciate him as an American icon than as a party icon.

File: 1461190908760.gif (1MB, 205x172px)

1MB, 205x172px

>>1882731

>>1882610
He'd have probably supported Webb.

File: washington.jpg (17KB, 300x270px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 300x270px

>>1882610
>is the whole "the parties switched during the LBJ era" thing just a bullshit meme?

Sort of.

There used to be much broader definitions of what made someone a democrat and republican, they were called 'big tent parties' because you'd have such diverse groups within them, usually done by courting enough single issue voters
to capture X percent of the electorate. Party unity was still a thing, but it was about convenience more than universally supported party platforms.

Also, you didn't just have multiple wings per party, but many named subgroups; Copperhead democrats, Dixiecrats, Rockefeller Republicans, GOP Internationalists, Progressive Republicans (Bull Moose), Yellow Dog Democrats, etc...

The only modern example that comes close would be the divide between establishment Republicans and the Tea Party, or further back the New Deal coalition w/ FDR.