Rand Paul's Beef with Lincoln

Unlike his father, Rand Paul doesn't openly criticize President Lincoln as a tyrant; but he knows how to signal his acceptance of such views to the Tea Party fringe.

The Tea Party’s problem with Abraham Lincoln doesn’t end with Mark Williams, formerly of the Tea Party Express – just ask Rand Paul.

Williams is the former radio host who wrote an "open letter" to Lincoln supposedly in the voice of former slaves: “Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.”

Rand Paul is the Republican candidate for US Senate in Kentucky who presents himself as the candidate of the Tea Party.

Unlike his father Ron Paul, or his father's associates at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, Rand Paul does not openly criticize Lincoln as a tyrant who needlessly plunged the country into civil war on false pretenses.

On the other hand, to believers in the Ron Paul ideology, Rand Paul emits cues of his co-membership. For example: In the uproar after his comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the Rachel Maddow show, Rand Paul published in his hometown newspaper an op-ed about his view of civil rights:

When I read history I side with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas [sic] who fought for 30 years to end slavery… I cheer Lerone Bennet [sic] when he argues that the right of habeas corpus guaranteed in the Constitution should have derailed slavery long before the Civil War.

The most interesting thing about this op-ed is not just the strange omission of the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It is the citation of Lerone Bennett, former executive editor of Ebony magazine, who published an excoriating biography of Lincoln, Forced into Glory in 1999. Bennett presented a Lincoln who actively “supported the enslavement of the four million slaves."

The von Mises crowd might not share Bennett's black nationalism, but it welcomes his attack on Lincoln, the great demon figure of the Ron Paul ideology. Rand Paul knows better than to say such things aloud, but he also knows how to signal his acceptance of them.