I have been writing recently about how the current Republican party has become unhinged from any foundational principles and logic.

Although I often disagree with politically conservative perspectives, I have always regarded them as an important contribution to finding the best solution possible to a problem.

To illustrate what I think the Republican party needs to get back to, here are some of my favorite Republicans (and more importantly, why).

Abraham Lincoln – He was willing to fight a civil war over two important principles. The first was that you don’t have a nation if state rights are superior to a federal government. The second was that the issue driving state rights was preservation of the morally repugnant institution of slavery.

Lincoln was very unpopular and brutally criticized even by people in his own party. Yet he endured over four years of a war that killed hundreds of thousands, preserving the Union and abolishing slavery – something our Founding Fathers couldn’t figure out how to do.

Theodore Roosevelt – He was a Republican nominated to run as vice president because his party wanted to bury him in a dead end job. He became president when William McKinley was assassinated. 

Recognizing the destruction of a free and competitive market by monopolies, he took on “Big Business” to get back to what he called a “square deal” for all citizens. He also was a big supporter of our National Parks, protecting what he regarded as precious natural resources from economic plunder.

Herbert Hoover – Hampered by his conservative ideology, as president he was too unresponsive to the economic deprivation of the Great Depression. 

As a private citizen, he led multi-national efforts to feed millions of people across the world after both World Wars.

Dwight Eisenhower – One of our greatest infrastructure developments is the interstate highway system. While Eisenhower was motivated by a military perspective, this massive government investment in a standardized road system with no stop signs enabled long road trips for any American with access to a car. It also made the flow of goods from producers to customers faster and more efficient.

Richard Nixon – He created the Environmental Protection Agency, empowering the federal government to make rules to protect the environment and to monitor and enforce those rules. 

Nixon was also the first American president to visit China, opening diplomatic ties with our nation’s current most formidable adversary.

Gerald Ford – Knowing the nation needed to move on, President Ford pardoned Nixon after Watergate. Ford also knew that this was an extremely unpopular action that would likely cost him his political future, but he did it anyway.

George H.W. Bush – Bush was elected president partly on a promise to not raise taxes. After years of tax cuts and the failure of Reaganomics, our national debt had spiraled out of control. Bush knew government revenue must be increased, so he pushed through tax increases. He was not reelected.

George W. Bush – Our second Bush president stood tall after the 9-11 attacks, rallying the nation to go on the offensive against terrorism and drawing a line in the sand for all nations to declare whether they stood with us or the terrorists. This was exceptional, unifying leadership in that moment. 

Unfortunately he also started a totally unnecessary war in Iraq, based on a lie and destabilizing the Middle East to this day.

Colin Powell – A war hero as the head of the military during the first Iraq War to free Kuwait, as Secretary of State he made the case to the United Nations for the second Iraq War. He later went public about the falsehoods he had been given to justify a war that wasn’t justifiable. 

His courage was rewarded with vilification by many Republicans, effectively ending his career.

Adam Kinzinger – As a Republican U.S. Representative from Illinois, Kinzinger recognized the danger to our democracy in the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the continued assertions of a president that our election was fraudulent. He provided a leading voice in the House investigation of this probable insurrection.

Kinzinger decided he didn’t want to continue serving in Congress when his party demanded loyalty ahead of country. He has created a political action committee called “Country First.” Its stated objective is to advocate putting country over party. I would encourage you to look at their website: country1st.com.

Lincoln Project – This is a group of Republicans who formed a PAC they describe as “dedicated Americans protecting democracy.” They have two specific objectives. The first is to defeat Donald Trump in elections, and the second is to ensure Trumpism fails. This is another website worth a look.

There are some commonalities among my favorite Republicans. While they believed in conservative ideology, they abandoned it as circumstances demanded. When the right thing to do was unpopular, they chose to do the right thing – even if it cost them their office or career. 

For all the Republican yammering about patriotism, this is the true definition of it. They were demeaned as “RINOs” even before Trump gave us the term. And they didn’t need a “Country First” PAC to know that serving their country always is over party loyalty.