Mr. Unoriginal strikes again.

MATTHEWS: The Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln right into the 1960’s. All but six Republican US senators… voted for the Civil Rights Act…. It was the Southern Democrats who fought civil rights… I think we should remember this for one big reason. The reason the Republican Party shifted from being a party that shared its principles on civil rights with the northern and western Democrats is that it had to pursue its distorted and it had to pursue its notorious southern strategy… and that coalition is now today the one running the Republican Party.

Today’s Republican is party dominated by the South with little to no support from the North. Thanks to this bit of history we learned tonight, we know what came first, the southern strategy that led to a marriage of partisan purpose by the Republicans and old Jim Crow attitude. The result is a party of Abraham Lincoln that Lincoln himself wouldn’t be caught dead in!