Abraham Lincoln probably never said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

Ironically, almost everybody believes he did, which sort of discredits the quote’s wisdom.

Modern Republicans might offer an alternative ending to reclaim the line misattributed to their party’s greatest president: “…but we can all fool ourselves all of the time.”

After falling apart in 2008, Republicans began to accept and repeat any deranged notion that affirmed their frenzied paranoia over the new Anti-Christ-in-Chief.

The Chicken Little delusions helped them in the mid-terms, but presidential elections are won by appealing the wider American public, and Republicans have been too far from reality for too long to appeal to anyone but themselves.

The proof is in the primaries. Watch this motley crew of quacks and coots debate the issues. When they’re not busy highlighting each other’s absurd positions and failed careers (it’s a fertile lot, to be fair), they’re distinguishing themselves from a president who only exists in their kabuki carnival.

It is a point of pride for the GOP contenders that, unlike carnival Obama, they wouldn’t run around the world apologizing for America, nor support sham elections in Iran. Real Obama, who lives in the land of facts with the rest of us, wouldn’t and didn’t do those things either.

They are all in fierce opposition to the socialist president’s redistribution of wealth. Real Obama also opposes governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods (“socialism,” according to Webster). He uses the same progressive income tax approach that the federal government has since Lincoln signed the Tax Act of 1862. (Lincoln really did that.)

This stuff kills at the debates because it gets the base worked up. They know (because they’ve been repeating it to each other) that Barack Hussein Obama won’t stop destroying America until every rich man is dead and every church is replaced with an abortion clinic where gay illegal immigrants can get married. But it’s a reaction to an America the rest of us just don’t live in.

The GOP convinced itself, and then the rest of America, that government is inherently bad, that all regulation hinders prosperity and all tax cuts promote growth.

We tried the Reagan ideal. The experiment failed. In the last 30 years, income inequality exploded and the American middle class imploded, nearly decimating the achievements of New Deal Democrats. Meanwhile, corporate earnings rose to levels that would have made the Robber Barons blush and deregulation in the financial industry allowed a handful of people to send the world into a deep recession.

Mitt Romney will probably get the party’s nomination because, although even they despise him, he is considered the most electable. His selling point is his time as CEO of a financial services company. His plan is to cut corporate taxes and repeal the meager regulations passed under Obama. He’s been serving the interests of corporations for so long, he think they’re people.

Outside the carnival, the rest of us are tired of being poor and jobless while the rich make record profits while sending the jobs overseas. We won’t elect Romney. But you could fool a Republican.

Dave Balson is a senior journalism major.

He can be reached at 581-7942 or DENopinions@gmail.com.