Lincolnites Are Crazed Warmongers

Keith Olbermann is an idiot, but you knew that.

He is also a war monger.  That was not evident until earlier this month, and Olbermann doubled down yesterday.

Full disclosure.  Olbermann once labeled me one of the worst men in America.

Since then, and of course not because of me, his career has gone from bad to worse to in many ways irrelevant, unless you are a blathering idiot on The View or an editor at the Washington Post.

On 8 March, Olbermann published an opinion piece in said Washington Post declaring he was moving out of one of Trump’s New York buildings.  Good riddance.

But why is that not funny part? Olbermann objected to Trump’s loudmouthed, bombastic public discourse aimed at poking fun of those he doesn’t like.  This coming from a man who made a name for himself with loudmouthed, bombastic public discourse aimed at poking fun of those he doesn’t like.  He even admitted his hypocrisy in the piece.  But this never stopped anyone on the Left or in the American political class before.

In the midst of this junior high school rant, Olbermann dropped a couple of nuggets that show just how stupid this “brilliant” man is.

Olbermann: “Donald Trump’s few forays into actual issues suggest he is startlingly unaware of how the presidency or even ordinary governance works.”

I can somewhat forgive Olbermann for this statement.  He, like most Americans, has probably never read one sentence from the 1787 or 1788 ratification debates that described how the presidency was supposed to work.  According to that Constitution, the president is not a legislator in chief, labor boss in chief, gardener in chief, a scientist in chief, a school principal in chief, or a host of other titles Americans believe the president should hold.  In fact, Trump’s non-policy policy statements are a refreshing departure from the frivolous boilerplate policy platitudes most presidential candidates spout on the campaign trail.  The president was never designed to be anything more than the man who executed the laws of Congress, received foreign diplomats, and led the American military when Congress declared war.

That brings me to the most ridiculous statement of the piece.

Olbermann: “And it isn’t as though the American electorate hasn’t always had a soft spot for exactly the worst possible person for the presidency. Two months before the 1864 vote, some Republicans were so thoroughly convinced that Abraham Lincoln would lose in a landslide that they proposed to hold a second Republican convention and nominate somebody to run in his place. The Democrat they feared, George B. McClellan, was not only probably the worst general in the history of the country, but also, his campaign platform was predicated on stopping the Civil War, giving the South whatever it wanted, running the greatest president in history out of town and repudiating the Emancipation Proclamation. Even after the North’s victory at Atlanta turned the tide of the war and thus the election, McClellan — anti-Union, anti-Lincoln, anti-victory and pro-slavery — still got 45 percent of the all-Northern vote.”

Not satisfied that only five people read this in the Washington Post—I didn’t see it until someone alerted me to it—Olbermann reiterated his position on McClellan and the 1864 election yesterday on The View.  That might have added a dozen more imbeciles to the list of those who got the scoop first hand.

This is like throwing Babe Ruth a softball in a beer league game. Olbermann should get that simile.

Lincoln is one of the worst—not the greatest—presidents in American history.

The campaign platform that Olbermann so vehemently disagreed with was actually a peace platform designed to stop the bloodletting.  To Olbermann, this was bad, for Lincoln’s butchering of nearly one million men to “save the Union” was a just war that had to be continued at all cost.

Forget that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional, or that it freed not one slave, or that it would have allowed the Southern States back into the Union with slavery if they agreed to stop fighting.

Forget that slavery still existed in the Union until December 1865 and that McClellan said not one word that could be considered “pro-slavery” during the War, other than the same position Lincoln and virtually every other Northerner had at the outset, i.e. slave property was constitutionally protected and would not be confiscated nor interfered with.  See the proposed Corwin Amendment that Lincoln supported.

Forget that this “worst general in American” history delivered one of the fatal blows to the Confederate army at Sharpsburg in 1862, a Union victory that allowed Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Forget that Mr. Lincoln’s war was unconstitutional from day one and as per the Constitution the very definition of treason if anyone follows Lincoln’s legal logic.

Forget that the Democrat campaign platform explicitly stated, “That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired…” or that the Party sought to restore peace “on the basis of the Federal Union of the States,” or that McClellan said after accepting the nomination that, “The preservation of the Union was the avowed object for which the war was commenced.”  Sounds pro-Union to me.

Of course, the Union the Democrats sought to preserve was not the one Lincoln was remaking. Olbermann’s “greatest president in history” was trampling the ballot, suppressing civil liberties, and destroying the Constitution.

The 45 percent of Americans who voted against Lincoln in 1864 were not the idiots.  That label goes to the 55 percent who voted for Lincoln, the true “worst possible person for the presidency.”  A million American graves and the unconstitutional enlargement of executive power are a testament to that fact.

But again, maybe we should forgive Olbermann.  Bless his heart.  He is, after all, nothing more than an unemployed sportscaster with a big mouth.  It should not be expected for such a man to know about anything beyond box scores and jock straps.

That would be like asking a politician to tell the truth, even “Honest Abe.”

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