When Abraham Lincoln came to town as the first Republican president, the Democrats hated him on sight. They were the party of African-American slavery, after all, and while Lincoln phrased his beliefs carefully to give minimal offense, he was clear that "no nation can survive half slave and half free." The mildest curse they flung at him was to call him a hairy ape.  Until the Civil War broke out, nobody thought that this uneducated hick from the backwoods of Illinois would be anything but a disaster. The DC establishment hated him as an outsider. Even his own cabinet members plotted against him. His early generals were half-hearted and incompetent.  Lincoln saved the nation because he was focused on reality, not on some barmy fantasy, like Democratic presidents from Jimmy Carter to Obama. They all refused to face the reality of reactionary jihad in the Muslim world, starting with Khomeini in Iran, and the massacre of 9/11 (sponsored and carried out by...(Read Full Article)