Scott Walker thinks he's Abe Lincoln

Good president.

Scott. We knew Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln was a friend of ours. You're no Abe Lincoln.

Walker actually had the nerve to compare himself to the Great Emancipator when he went to Springfield, Ill., this week to collect checks from his rich friends. According to NBC,

Walker predicted he would win the recall, then invoked Lincoln, another controversial politician who’d had “the courage to move the state forward.”

“What has made America great is that we’ve had men and women who’ve had the courage to think about their children and their grandchildren, not about their political careers,” he said.

Bad governor.

Larry Spivack, president of the Illinois Labor History Society, says Lincoln probably turned over in his grave. Spivack pointed out some of the differences for GateHouse News Service:

Abraham Lincoln believed that a robust working class was the engine that could drive American prosperity. “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed,” President Lincoln told Congress in 1861. “Labor is the superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” In contrast, Scott Walker gave tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks to big corporations in the name of creating jobs... 

Lincoln also believed that all workers should have the power to strike as a means of ensuring fair treatment. While seeking the GOP presidential nomination in Connecticut in 1860, he praised a work stoppage by local shoemakers, saying, “I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to … and wish it might prevail everywhere.” 

Today, as corporate and political forces conspire to divide workers against one another, it is instructive to note that Lincoln prized solidarity. “The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relationship, should be one uniting all working people,” he wrote in 1864. Yet 150 years later, Walker and his ilk encourage and thrive on discord and division, setting workers in the private sector against those in the public service, or those who have a union versus those not organized yet.

Nor was Abe Lincoln in the habit of killing jobs, as Walker is. Last month, the Dairyland Dictator managed to scare off another 4,500 jobs. Quite an accomplishment, considering Wisconsin had the worst job-creation record in the country last year. 50 out of 50.