Lincoln quotation by Nancy Pelosi

[AussieMick]

Well, she got the quote right. It is a Lincoln quote. I don’t know the context she used it for.

Transcript of Pelosi Interview on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos
NOVEMBER 13, 2022

George Stephanopoulos. What steps do Democrats need to take to bring the country together?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, we have always been taking that step because we honor our oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that should be a unifying principle for us.

The – when, many of our bills, we worked very hard to make it bipartisan, bipartisan, bipartisan. And while the bills were bipartisan, the votes were not.

So again, I go back to Abraham Lincoln: ‘Public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish almost anything. Without it, practically nothing.’

And the point I want to make is, when the public knows what is at stake and what's happening there, I think we'll see more cooperation, again, working together to produce a bill, but not having people vote no, take the dough, and make it look like we don't have bipartisanship, when, in fact, in the bills we do, but in the votes, not necessarily. Let the public know.

I always feel uncomfortable when politicians talk of bipartisanship. It seems (often, anyway) to be contrary to democratic values.

Anyway, another Lincoln quote ...

"Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came …. Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”

Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

I guess Lincoln could have been more bipartisan towards the South (and to some of his colleagues in the North). But then he wouldnt have achieved what he did (IMO).