In 1854, Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act brought Abraham Lincoln back into politics.1 Lincoln even ran for election to the Illinois General Assembly again (he had left the legislature in 1842 and had only served one term in Congress since). The election of 1854 produced a thirteen-seat majority of anti-Nebraska people in the legislature. Seeing an opportunity, Lincoln resigned his newly-won seat in the legislature to try for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.2
The problem was that the anti-Nebraska majority included a mixture of Whigs (Lincoln was a Whig), anti-slavery Democrats, a few members of the new Republican party, and others. The only thing that united them was their opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. On the first ballot, Lincoln led the vote, but he didn’t have a majority. He couldn’t get the anti-Nebraska Democrats to vote for him. After a number of ballots, Lincoln realized he wasn’t going to win, and, if he continued, the regular Democrats might eventually win the seat. Lincoln withdrew and threw his support to Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Nebraska Democrat, who won by one vote.3
Of the other two remaining candidates, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, I have to agree with The Economist. Marco Rubio is better. Ted Cruz needs to withdraw. Senator Cruz is not going to get elected (you don’t carpet bomb ISIS to see if the sand will glow; it’s wrong and it won’t work). Even if Senator Cruz has some chance, Marco Rubio has a better one. At this point, it is more about stopping Donald Trump (who would be a terrible nominee and an even worse president, if, heaven forbid, he were to be elected) than any one candidate’s personal ambition. Unless Senator Cruz is playing a long game: If he doesn’t win the nomination himself, as long as he stops Senator Rubio, he will set himself up to for 2020 (because Donald Trump would lose in November), and after twelve years of Democrats, he would have a good chance to get elected then.
Except that gives us four more years of Democratic presidency (and potentially at least two years of a Democratic Congress if Donald Trump is as scary a candidate as I think he will be), which means, inter alia:
- With the Scalia vacancy to be filled and probably more, we lose the Supreme Court for a generation.
- Cutting back federal government overreach isn’t going to happen.
- Even if we keep one house of Congress, Hillary Clinton has said that, if Congress won’t do what she wants, she’ll go even farther than Barack Obama in doing things by executive order.
- Barack Obama’s foreign policy pretty much represents the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton isn’t going to be able to change it that much.
The alternative of a Donald Trump presidency is even worse. Also, who knows if the Republican Party would even survive a Donald Trump candidacy. Once people leave, as many of us will if Donald Trump is the nominee, how many will come back?
I do not know if Donald Trump can be denied the Republican nomination at this point. But the only way to do it is for the Republicans running for the nomination to do what Abraham Lincoln did in 1854. Do we have any Lincolns?
---------
1 The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed slavery’s extension into these territories by the vote of the people in these territories. This was Judge Douglas’s so-called “popular sovereignty” doctrine.
2 Before the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures. Also, in Illinois in 1854, a member of the General Assembly could not be elected Senator.
3 See Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952), p. 153-55 (Modern Library Edition), and Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial (2010), p. 75-76 (Norton paperback ecition).
Comments