You cannot include the abolitionists in a history of the Republican Party and exclude Richard Nixon, who characterized the Civil Rights Movement as criminal and launched the "war on crime" in response. No single effort was more responsible for the white supremacist base that so characterizes the Republican base today.  Those who supported civil rights fled to the Democratic Party and the Republicans got all of the white supremacists. Remember that the south – the former slave holding states -  voted  against of the party of Lincoln from the Civil War until 1968. It was only a short distance from there to 60% of the Republican Party believing that Obama was born in Kenya. until the Republican Party does something about it's white supremacy problem, it can forget about anything else it wants to accomplish.