Obama should know better than to go off the TelePrompter

By this time, Barack Obama should know better than to go off the TelePrompter. In the text of the speech last night given to a joint session of Congress, Obama was supposed to make a single reference to Abraham Lincoln:

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges.

Unfortunately, Obama felt the need to take a partisan shot at his opposition, and in doing so, offered up a historic flub (via Greg Hengler):

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.

Er, not quite. Lincoln wasn’t even the GOP’s first Presidential nominee; the first Republican nominee was John C. Fremont in 1856. As the Independence Hall Association recalls, the actual founders of the Republican Party are “Northern leaders such as Horace Greeley, Salmon Chase and Charles Sumner.” Lincoln joined early, as did other anti-slavery Whigs whose party was unraveling at the time, and Lincoln came in second for the 1856 vice-presidential nomination, but he was not a founder of the party.  By the time he became a factor in the GOP, the party had already taken a majority in the House of Representatives (1855); it also carried 11 states and 114 electoral votes in the 1856 election that sent Democrat James Buchanan to the White House. (Continues here)