1. Great thread. I return to paradox that the Claremont Institute, so heavily shaped by the late Harry Jaffa, who idealized Lincoln as the great vindicator of American democracy, is now now run by people who want to minimize the importance of the Civil War or are neo-Confederates
https://twitter.com/lionel_trolling/status/1443920389017640985
2. The thing is, while Jaffa's scholarship on Lincoln (primarily Crisis of the House Divided) & his attacks on neo-Calhounites (in many polemics) are great, Jaffa himself was a slippery political actor willing to make alliances with dubious characters.
3. George Kateb noted this early as 1965, pointing out contradiction between Jaffa's Lincoln celebration & his work as Goldwater speechwriter (since Goldwater opposed Civil Rights Act). Can also be seen in Jaffa's friendship with neo-confederate M.E. Bradford.
4. Jaffa & Bradford engaged in a lengthy polemical exchange on Lincoln in American Spectator in 1980s which is worth revisiting as the seedbed for alot of this stuff. Jaffa (Lincoln as embodiment of American democracy at peak) vs. Bradford (Lincoln as tyrant).
5. The thing about the debate is that even though Jaffa & Bradford argued fiercely on Lincoln, they both repeatedly insisted they agreed on everything else. Jaffa explicitly endorsed Bradford's failed bid to be head of National Endowment for Humanities.
6. Jaffa/Bradford exchange shows how moot Jaffa's scholarship was to his practical political project of building coalition of right-wing Republicans. Intellectually pro-Lincoln but willing to make common cause with neo-Confederates. His own version of the Southern Strategy
7. For more on Jaffa and devolution of West Coast Straussianism into Trumpist apologia, you can listen to a discussion I had with @willwilkinson jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-the-…
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