The Republican war on the Constitution

For a GOP doubling down on a strategy of division and discrimination, the Constitution appears increasingly old and in the way.

Robert Shrum

It is the party of Lincoln no more.

As part of a crass strategy to appeal to anti-immigrant paranoia and racism, Republican leaders are now assaulting the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment, which was passed after Lincoln’s death, ratified his life’s work. Republicans propose to repeal its guarantee of citizenship as a birthright, and while the impetus for this assault on constitutional principle comes from the GOP’s tea-intoxicated fringe, it has been seconded by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Lindsey Graham. In today’s GOP, the few with loose morals vie to lead the many with loose marbles.

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Robert Shrum has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party. In addition to being the chief strategist for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Shrum has advised thirty winning U.S. Senate campaigns; eight winning campaigns for governor; mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities; and the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shrum's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, and other publications. The author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner (Simon and Schuster), he is currently a Senior Fellow at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.