The First Republican: What we can learn from Lincoln

Thomas Krannawitter, who teaches political science at Hillsdale College in Michigan and is author of "Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest," has a terrific op-ed in today's Investor's Business Daily.

"This is the 200th birthday of the first Republican to win a national election, Abraham Lincoln," Krannawitter writes. "It is good for Republicans today to remember Lincoln, not to be antiquarians, but to learn from his principled defense of the Constitution."

From his column:

All three branches of government routinely ignore or twist the meaning of the Constitution, while many of our problems today are symptoms of policies that have no constitutional foundation.

If we are to recover the authority of the Constitution and the many ways it restrains and channels government power, someone or some party must offer a principled defense of the cause of constitutional government.

They must understand not only the Constitution, but also the principles that informed its original purposes and aspirations, principles found in the Declaration of Independence among other places.

No one understood that better than Lincoln.

Read the full column, "Lincoln's Defense Of Constitution Is Moral For Today's Republicans," at the newspaper's Web site.