Encyclopedia
For a detailed history and bibliography see History of the United States Republican Party. For the Republican Party which flourished 1792–1830, see Early Republican Party. For a similar name in other countries, see Republican Party.The
Republican Party is one of the two major political organizations in the
United States' two party system; its great rival is the Democratic Party.
In addition to controlling the Executive Branch since 2001, the Republican Party has held majorities in the
United States Senate and
United States House of Representatives since 1995 except for 18 months in the Senate from 2001-2 controlled by the Democrats. Republicans currently hold 28 governorships and have majorities in 20 state legislatures.
Normally the sitting president is the leader of his party, controlling the national committee and taking the roles of chief spokesman and chief fundraiser. President Bush selected
Ken Mehlman as the chairman of the
Republican National Committee in January 2005.
Ideology
The Republican Party since 1896 has been more socially
conservative and economically
libertarian of the two major parties, and has closer ties to both
Wall Street and
Main Street . Republicans have a strong belief in personal responsibility, smaller government, and corporate
entrepreneurship. In his 1981 inaugural address, Republican President
Ronald Reagan summed up his belief in limited government when he said, "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
Economically, Republicans emphasize the role of corporate and personal decision making in fostering economic prosperity. They support free-market policies favoring economic liberalism and
capitalism with limited regulation. The predominant economic theory held by modern Republicans is Reaganomics. Popularized by
Ronald Reagan, this theory holds that reduced income tax rates increase
GDP growth and thereby generate more revenue for the government from the taxes on the extra growth. This belief is reflected, in part, by the party's long-term advocacy of tax cuts, a major Republican theme since the 1920s. Republicans contend that a series of income tax cuts since 2001 has bolstered the economy. Many Republicans consider the income tax system to be inherently inefficient and unfairly disproportionate for those who create jobs and wealth. They believe private spending is usually more efficient than government spending.
Socially, Republicans agree there should be a "safety net" to assist the less fortunate; however, they favor programs that are less expensive, more reliant on private funding and include stricter requirements for eligibility. The majority of the GOP's national and state candidates oppose
abortion, oppose the legalization of
same sex marriage, and favor faith-based initiatives. They support welfare benefit reductions and oppose racial quotas but are split regarding the desirability of affirmative action for women and minorities. Some Republicans support school choice through
charter schools and education vouchers; and many have denounced the performance of the public school system and the teachers' union. Starting with the
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the party has demanded a stronger system of accountability for public schools.
The party staunchly opposes a single payer universal health care system, such as that found in Canada or in most of Europe, sometimes referring to it as "socialized medicine." and are in favor of the current personal or employer based system of insurance, supplemented by Medicare and Medicaid . Republican Governor
Mitt Romney pushed through a state insurance plan in Massachusetts that won bipartisan support in 2006.
Republicans have a mixed record of supporting the historically popular Medicare and
Medicaid programs that provide medical care for seniors and the poor, respectively. On the one hand, congressional Republicans and the Bush administration supported a reduced rate of growth to Medicaid. On the other hand, congressional Republicans expanded Medicare, supporting a new drug plan for seniors, to the dismay of some fiscal conservatives.
The party is more aggressive than the Democrats on the high salience issue of illegal immigration that is currently under debate. Most of its membership favors
capital punishment, supports gun ownership rights, and the religious wing of the party tends to support organized prayer in public schools and the inclusion of teaching
creationism or
intelligent design. Although the GOP has voted for increases in government funding of scientific research, many members actively oppose the federal funding of
embryonic stem cell research because it involves the
abortion of human
embryos. They prefer to promote
adult stem cell research because it is already a medically proven alternative and has no connection to abortion.
Internationally, the party supports
neoconservative policies with regard to the
War on Terror, including military efforts in
Afghanistan and the
2003 invasion of Iraq, and attempts to spread democracy in the
Middle East and around the world. The Bush administration supports the position that the
Geneva Conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants. The party, through U.N. Ambassador
Bolton, has advocated reforms in the
UN to halt corruption such as that which afflicted the Oil-for-Food Programme. The GOP opposes the
Kyoto Protocol, claiming that the treaty would be ineffective to accomplish its stated goal to reduce global warming and that the cost would be slowed global
economic growth. They also point to the uneven application of the Protocol to countries such as
China and
India. Most Republicans have strongly promoted free trade agreements, most notably
NAFTA,
CAFTA and now an effort to go further south to
Brazil.
Symbols
The
Democrats have been around longer by 25 years or so, but the term
Grand Old Party is a traditional nickname for the Republicans, and the acronym
G.O.P. is commonly used designation. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary the first known reference to the Republican party as the "grand old party" came in 1876. The first use of the abbreviation G.O.P. is dated 1884.
The mascot symbol, historically, is the
elephant. A political cartoon by
Thomas Nast, published in
Harper's Weekly is a monthly general-interest magazine [i] covering literature, politics, culture, ...
on 7 November 1874, is considered the first important use of the symbol. In the early 20th century, the usual symbol of the Republican Party in Midwestern states such as
Indiana and
Ohio was the
eagle, as opposed to the Democratic donkey. This symbol still appears on Indiana ballots.
More recently, its unofficial color is red.
Historical Trends
For more detailed history and bibliography, see History of the United States Republican Party.The Republican Party was established in 1854 by a coalition of former Whigs,
Northern Democrats, and
Free-Soilers who opposed the expansion of
slavery and held a vision for modernizing the United States. The party initially had its base in the
Northeast and
Midwest, but in recent decades it has increasingly shifted to the inland
West and the
South.
Since the party fielded its first presidential candidate,
John C. Frémont, in 1856, 18 of the 29
United States Presidents have been Republicans, including current
President George W. Bush. It holds 28 out of 50 governorships, and controls 20 state legislatures compared to the Democratic Party's 19.
Third Party System: Birth, 1854–1860
The new party was created in 1854 as an act of defiance against what activists denounced as the Slave Power -the powerful class of slaveholders who were conspiring to control the federal government and to spread slavery nationwide. The party founders adopted the name "Republican," echoing 1776, to indicate it was the carrier of "republican" values regarding civic virtue, and opposition to aristocracy and corruption.
Besides opposition to slavery, the new party put forward a vision of modernization -emphasizing higher education, banking, railroads, industry, and cities, while promising free homesteads to farmers.
John C. Frémont ran as the first Republican nominee for President, using the slogan: "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont." Although Frémont lost, his party showed a strong base. It dominated in
New England, New York, and the northern Midwest, and had a strong presence in the rest of the North. It had almost no support in the South, where it was roundly denounced in 1856-1860 as a divisive force that threatened civil war. The election of
Abraham Lincoln in 1860 began a new era of Republican dominance based in the industrial Northeast and agricultural Midwest. Republicans still often refer to their party as the "party of Lincoln."
Civil War and the Era of Republican Dominance, 1860–1896
Lincoln proved brilliantly successful in uniting all the factions of his party to fight for the Union. However he often disagreed with the Radical Republicans who demanded harsher measures toward the South. In Congress the party passed major legislation to promote rapid modernization, including a national banking system, high tariffs, the first income tax, many excise taxes, paper money issued without backing , a huge national debt, homestead laws, and land grants to aid higher education, railroads and agriculture. The Republicans denounced the northern anti war Democrats as disloyal
Copperheads and won enough War Democrats to maintain their majority in 1862, and reelect Lincoln by a landslide in 1864. During
Reconstruction, 1865-1877, how to deal with the ex-Confederates and the freed slaves or Freedmen were the major issues. President
Andrew Johnson, never a Republican, broke with the Radicals in 1866. The showdown came in the Congressional elections of 1866, in which the Radicals won a sweeping victory and took full control of Reconstruction, passing key laws over Johnson's vetoes. The Radicals imposed Republican rule on the South -a coalition of Freedmen, Scalawags, and Carpetbaggers, who were deeply resented by the conservative ex-Confederates. Elected in 1868,
Ulysses S. Grant supported radical reconstruction programs in the South, the
Fourteenth Amendment, equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen; most of all Grant was the hero of the war veterans, who marched to his tune. Reconstruction came to an end when the contested election of 1876 was awarded to Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes who promised, through the unofficial Compromise of 1877, to withdraw federal troops from control of the last three Southern states. The region then became the Solid South, giving overwhelming majorities of its electoral votes and Congressional seats to the Democrats until 1964.
As the Northern post-war economy boomed with industry, railroads, mines, and fast-growing cities, as well as prosperous agriculture, the Republicans took credit and promoted policies to keep the fast growth going. The Democratic Party was largely controlled by pro-business Bourbon Democrats until 1896. The GOP supported big business generally, hard money , high
tariffs, and generous pensions for Union veterans. By 1890, the Republicans had agreed to the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints from owners of small businesses and farmers. Civil service reform was a bipartisan program that eliminated most patronage by 1900. Foreign affairs seldom became partisan issues . Much more salient were cultural issues. The GOP supported the pietistic Protestants who demanded
Prohibition. That angered wet Republicans, especially
German Americans, who broke ranks in 1890-1892, handing power to the Democrats.
From 1860 to 1912, the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion". Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavern keepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. "Romanism" meant
Roman Catholicism, especially the Irish, who staffed the Democratic Party in the large cities, and whom the Republicans denounced for political corruption. "Rebellion" stood for the Confederates who tried to break the Union in 1861, and the
Copperheads in the North who sympathized with them.
Demographic trends aided the Democrats, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were mostly Democrats, and outnumbered the British and Scandinavian Republicans. During the 1880s elections were remarkably close. The Democrats usually lost but won in
1884 and
1892). In
the 1894 Congressional elections, the GOP scored the biggest landslide in its history, as Democrats were blamed for the severe economic depression 1893–1897 and the violent coal and railroad strikes of 1894.
See also
American election campaigns in the 19th CenturyFourth Party System: Progressive Era, 1896–1932
The election of
William McKinley in
1896 marked the a new era of Republican dominance and is sometimes cited as a realigning election. He relied heavily on finance, railroads, industry and the middle classes for his support and cemented the Republicans as the party of business. His campaign manager, Ohio's
Marcus Hanna, developed a detailed plan for getting contributions from the business world, and McKinley outspent his rival
William Jennings Bryan by a large margin. McKinley was the first president to promote pluralism, arguing that prosperity would be shared by all ethnic and religious groups.
Theodore Roosevelt was the most dynamic personality of the era. After promising to continue McKinley's policies, he won reelection in
1904. He then veered left, attacking big business and busting the trusts. Roosevelt anointed
William Howard Taft in
1908, but Taft worked more with the conservatives led by Senator
Nelson W. Aldrich, although it should be noted that more trusts were broken up under Taft than Roosevelt. The Payne-Aldrich tariff angered Midwestern insurgents. The widening division between progressive and
conservative forces in the party resulted in a third-party candidacy for Roosevelt on the Progressive, or "Bull Moose" ticket in
the election of 1912. He finished ahead of Taft, but the split in the Republican vote resulted in a decisive victory for Democrat
Woodrow Wilson, temporarily interrupting the Republican era.
The party controlled the presidency throughout the
1920s, running on a platform of opposition to the League of Nations, high tariffs, and promotion of business interests.
Warren G. Harding,
Calvin Coolidge and
Herbert Hoover were resoundingly elected in
1920,
1924, and
1928 respectively. Although the party did very well in large cities and among ethnic Catholics in presidential elections of 1920-24, it was unable to hold those gains in 1928.
In October 1929, the stock market crashed, giving rise to the
Great Depression. Hoover, by nature an activist, attempted to do what he could to alleviate the widespread suffering caused by the Depression, but his strict adherence to what he believed were Republican principles precluded him from establishing relief directly from the federal government. The Democrats made major gains in the 1930 midterm elections, giving them congressional parity for the first time since Woodrow Wilson's presidency.
Fifth Party System: Opposing the New Deal Coalition, 1933–53
In 1932 Hoover was swamped in a landslide defeat to
Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal Coalition, which became a dominant fact of American political life for the middle third of the century. Democrats also gained large majorities in both houses of Congress.
After Roosevelt took office in 1933, New Deal legislation sailed through Congress at lightning speed. In the 1934 midterm elections, ten Republican senators went down to defeat, leaving them with only 25 against 71 Democrats. The House of Representatives was also split in a similar ratio. The "Second New Deal" was heavily criticized by the Republicans in Congress, who likened it to class warfare and
socialism. The volume of legislation, as well as the inability of the Republicans to block it, soon made the opposition to Roosevelt develop into bitterness and sometimes hatred for "that man in the White House."
Little known Governor
Alfred Landon of Kansas ran an ineffective moderate campaign as the Roosevelt landslide of 1936 swept 46 states. The GOP was left with only 16 senators and 88 representatives to oppose the New Deal.
Roosevelt alienated many conservative Democrats, in 1937, by his unexpected plan to "pack" the Supreme Court. Following a sharp recession that hit early in 1938, major strikes all over the country, and Roosevelt's failed efforts to purge the conservatives from the court, the GOP gaining 75 House seats in 1938. Conservative Democrats, mostly from the South, joined with Republicans led by Senator
Robert A. Taft to create the conservative coalition, which dominated domestic issues in Congress until 1964.
In 1939–41 there was a sharp debate within the GOP about support for Britain in
World War II.
Internationalists, such as
Henry Stimson and
Frank Knox, wanted to support Britain and
isolationists, such as
Robert Taft and
Arthur Vandenberg, strongly opposed these moves as unwise, if not unconstitutional. The
America First movement was a bipartisan coalition of isolationists. In
1940, a total unknown
Wendell Willkie at the last minute won over the party and the delegates and was nominated. He crusaded against the inefficiencies of the New Deal and Roosevelt's break with the strong tradition against a third term. Pearl Harbor ended the isolationist-internationalist debate. The Republicans further cut the Democratic majority in the 1942 midterm elections. With wartime production creating prosperity, the Conservative coalition terminated most New Deal relief programs.
As a minority party, the GOP had two wings: The "left wing" supported most of the New Deal while promising to run it more efficiently. The "right wing" opposed the New Deal from the beginning and managed to repeal large parts during the 1940s in cooperation with conservative southern Democrats in the conservative coalition. Liberals, led by Dewey, dominated the Northeast. Conservatives, led by Taft, dominated the Midwest. The West was split, and the South was still solidly Democratic. Dewey did not reject the New Deal programs, but demanded more efficiency, more support for economic growth, and less corruption. He was more willing than Taft to support Britain in the early years of the war.
In
1944, a clearly frail Roosevelt defeated Dewey, who was now governor of New York, for his fourth term, but Dewey made a good showing that would lead to his selection as the candidate in 1948.
Roosevelt died in office in 1945, and
Harry S. Truman became president. With the end of the war, unrest among organized labor led to many strikes in 1946, and the resulting disruptions helped the GOP. With the blunders of the Truman administration in 1945 and 1946, the slogans "Had Enough?" and "To Err is Truman" became Republican rallying cries, and the GOP won control of Congress for the first time since 1928, with Joseph Martin as Speaker of the House. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was designed to balance the rights of management and labor. It was the central issue of many elections in industrial states in the 1940s and 1950s, but the unions were never able to repeal it.
In 1948, with Republicans split left and right, Truman boldly called Congress into a special session, and sent it a load of liberal legislation consistent with the Dewey platform, and dared them to act on it, knowing that the conservative Republicans would block action. Truman then attacked the Republican "Do-Nothing Congress" as a whipping boy for all of the nation's problems. Truman stunned Dewey and the Republicans with a plurality of just over two million popular votes , but a decisive 303-189 victory in the Electoral College.
Eisenhower and Nixon, 1953–1974
After the war the isolationists in the conservative wing opposed the
United Nations, and were half-hearted in exercising opposition to the expansion of Communism around the world.
Dwight Eisenhower, a NATO commander, defeated Taft in 1952 on foreign policy issues. The two men were not far apart on domestic issues. Eisenhower was an exception to most presidents in that he usually let Nixon handle party affairs .
Richard Nixon was defeated in 1960 in a close election, dooming his liberal wing of the party. The conservatives made a comeback in 1964 as
Barry Goldwater defeated
Nelson Rockefeller in the primary. Goldwater was strongly opposed to the New Deal and the United Nations, but he rejected isolationism and containment, calling for an aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy. He was defeated by
Lyndon Johnson in a landslide that brought down many senior Republican Congressmen across the country. Goldwater blamed the magnitude of his defeat on the assassination of
John F. Kennedy a year before the election, and on Johnson running a campaign of smears.
The New Deal Coalition collapsed in the mid 1960s in the face of urban riots, the Vietnam war, and the disillusionment that the New Deal could be revived by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Nixon defeated both
Hubert Humphrey and
George C. Wallace 
