King, Lincoln were GOP; Obama isn't

President-elect Barack Obama is no Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln.

First, Obama is a Democrat and King was a Republican.

King knew that it was the Democrat Party that blocked the Civil Rights Act's passage in Congress in 1964; the Civil Rights Act was introduced by a Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and only passed in 1964 by President Johnson with the help of the Republicans in Congress, after a filibuster led by Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd failed.

Byrd was the Democratic Senate leader and was once a KKK member. It was the Democratic President John F. Kennedy who wiretapped King, violating his civil rights.

It was a Republican president, Lincoln, who told the southern states to end slavery and won a Civil War to save the union and to end slavery.

Obama wants to associate himself with King and Lincoln, both Republicans while he is a member of the Democratic Party that has been negative toward African-Americans the past couple centuries.

Public schools today do not teach that both King and Lincoln were Republicans. They want the students to assume they were of the Democratic Party.

Obama tries to wrap his arms around the memory and history of both King and Lincoln, but he doesn't explain they were from a different political party that actually fought for African-Americans.

If Obama was truly in line with King and Lincoln, he would switch political parties and be a Republican.

Raymond Kohn

Wheeling