Seeing a future threat to the practice
of slavery with the election of Abraham
Lincoln, the first Republican president,
many states in the South declared
secession and joined the Confederacy.
Under the leadership of Lincoln and a
Republican Congress, it led the fight to
destroy the Confederacy during the
American Civil War, preserving the Union
and abolishing slavery. The aftermath
saw the party largely dominate the
national political scene until 1932. The
GOP lost its congressional majorities
during the Great Depression when the
Democrats' New Deal programs proved
popular. Dwight D. Eisenhower presided
over a period of economic prosperity
after the Second World War. Following
the successes of the Civil Rights
Movement in the 1960s, the party's core
base shifted, with the Southern states
became increasingly Republican and the
Northeastern states increasingly
Democratic.[23][24] After the Supreme
Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade,
the Republican Party opposed abortion in
its party platform. Richard Nixon
carried 49 states in 1972 with his
silent majority, even as the Watergate
scandal dogged his campaign leading to
his resignation. After Gerald Ford
pardoned Nixon, he lost election to a
full term and the Republicans would not
regain power and realign the political
landscape once more until 1980 with the
election of Ronald Reagan, who brought
together advocates of free-market
economics, social conservatives, and
Soviet Union hawks.
As of the
2020s, the party does best among voters
without a postgraduate degree; and those
who live in rural, ex-urban, or small
town areas; are married, men, or White;
or who are evangelical Christians or
Latter Day Saints. While it does not
receive the majority of the votes of
most racial and sexual minorities, it
does among Cuban and Vietnamese voters.
Since the 1980s, the party has gained
support among members of the white
working class while it has lost support
among affluent and college-educated
whites. Since 2012, it has gained
support among minorities, particularly
working-class Asians and Hispanic/Latino
Americans. The party currently supports
deregulation, lower taxes, gun rights,
restrictions on abortion, restrictions
on labor unions, and increased military
spending. It has taken widely variant
positions on abortion, immigration,
trade and foreign policy in its history.
The Republican Party is a member of
the International Democrat Union, an
international alliance of centre-right
political parties. It has several
prominent political wings, including a
student wing, the College Republicans; a
women's wing, the National Federation of
Republican Women; and an LGBT wing, the
Log Cabin Republicans. As of 2023, the
GOP holds a majority in the U.S. House
of Representatives, 26 state
governorships, 28 state legislatures,
and 22 state government trisects. Its
most recent presidential nominee was
Donald Trump, who was the 45th U.S.
president from 2017 to 2021. There have
been 19 Republican presidents, the most
from any one political party.
History
19th
century
Political parties
derivation. Dotted line means
unofficially.
The Republican
Party was founded in the northern states
in 1854 by forces opposed to the
expansion of slavery, ex-Whigs and
ex-Free Soilers. The Republican Party
quickly became the principal opposition
to the dominant Democratic Party and the
briefly popular Know Nothing Party. The
party grew out of opposition to the
Kansas Nebraska Act, which repealed the
Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas
Territory and Nebraska Territory to
slavery and future admission as slave
states. They denounced the expansion of
slavery as a great evil, but did not
call for ending it in the southern
states. While opposition to the
expansion of slavery was the most
consequential founding principal of the
party, like the Whig party it replaced,
Republicans also called for economic and
social modernization.
The first
public meeting of the general
anti-Nebraska movement, at which the
name Republican was proposed, was held
on March 20, 1854, at the Little White
Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. The
name was partly chosen to pay homage to
Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican
Party. The first official party
convention was held on July 6, 1854, in
Jackson, Michigan.
The party
emerged from the great political
realignment of the mid-1850s. Historian
William Gienapp argues that the great
realignment of the 1850s began before
the Whigs' collapse, and was caused not
by politicians but by voters at the
local level. The central forces were
ethno-cultural, involving tensions
between pietistic Protestants versus
liturgical Catholics, Lutherans and
Episcopalians regarding Catholicism,
prohibition and nativism. The Know
Nothing Party embodied the social forces
at work, but its weak leadership was
unable to solidify its organization, and
the Republicans picked it apart.
Nativism was so powerful that the
Republicans could not avoid it, but they
did minimize it and turn voter wrath
against the threat that slave owners
would buy up the good farm lands
wherever slavery was allowed. The
realignment was powerful because it
forced voters to switch parties, as
typified by the rise and fall of the
Know Nothings, the rise of the
Republican Party and the splits in the
Democratic Party.
At the 1856
Republican National Convention, the
party adopted a national platform
emphasizing opposition to the expansion
of slavery into the territories. While
Republican nominee John C. Fremont lost
the 1856 United States presidential
election to Democrat James Buchanan,
Buchanan only managed to win four of the
fourteen northern states, winning his
home state of Pennsylvania narrowly.
Republicans fared better in
Congressional and local elections, but
Know Nothing candidates took a
significant number of seats, creating an
awkward three party arrangement. Despite
the loss of the presidency and the lack
of a majority in Congress, Republicans
were able to orchestrate a Republican
Speaker of the House, which went to
Nathaniel P. Banks. Historian James M.
McPherson writes regarding Banks'
speakership that "if any one moment
marked the birth of the Republican
party, this was it."
The
Republicans were eager for the elections
of 1860. Former Illinois Representative
Abraham Lincoln spent several years
building support within the party,
campaigning heavily for Fremont in 1856
and making a bid for the Senate in 1858,
losing to Democrat Stephen A. Douglas
but gaining national attention for the
Lincoln Douglas debates it produced. At
the 1860 Republican National Convention,
Lincoln consolidated support among
opponents of New York Senator William H.
Seward, a fierce abolitionist who some
Republicans feared would be too radical
for crucial states such as Pennsylvania
and Indiana, as well as those who
disapproved of his support for Irish
immigrants.[60] Lincoln won on the third
ballot and was ultimately elected
president in the general election in a
rematch against Douglas. Lincoln had not
been on the ballot in a single southern
state, and even if the vote for
Democrats had not been split between
Douglas, John C. Breckinridge and John
Bell, the Republicans would've still won
but without the popular vote. This
election result helped kickstart the
American Civil War which lasted from
1861 until 1865.
The election of
1864 united War Democrats with the GOP
and saw Lincoln and Tennessee Democratic
Senator Andrew Johnson get nominated on
the National Union Party ticket; Lincoln
was re-elected. By June 1865, slavery
was dead in the ex Confederate states,
but still existed in some border states.
Under Republican congressional
leadership, the Thirteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution which
banned slavery in the United States
passed in 1865; it was ratified in
December 1865.
Reconstruction, the
gold standard, and the Gilded Age
Radical
Republicans during Lincoln's presidency
felt he was too moderate in his
eradication of slavery and opposed his
ten percent plan. Radical Republicans
passed the Wade Davis Bill in 1864,
which sought to enforce the taking of
the Ironclad Oath for all former
Confederates. Lincoln vetoed the bill,
believing it would jeopardize the
peaceful reintegration of the
Confederate states into the United
States.
Following the
assassination of Lincoln, Johnson
ascended to the presidency and was
deplored by Radical Republicans. Johnson
was vitriolic in his criticisms of the
Radical Republicans during a national
tour ahead of the 1866 midterm
elections.[66] Anti-Johnson Republicans
won a two-thirds majority in both
chambers of Congress following the
elections, which helped lead the way
toward his impeachment and near ouster
from office in 1868. That same year,
former Union Army General Ulysses S.
Grant was elected as the next Republican
president.
Grant was a Radical
Republican which created some division
within the party, some such as
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and
Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull opposed
most of his Reconstructionist policies.
Others found contempt with the
large-scale corruption present in
Grant's administration, with the
emerging Stalwart faction defending
Grant and the spoils system, whereas the
Half-Breeds pushed for reform of the
civil service.[68] Republicans who
opposed Grant branched off to form the
Liberal Republican Party, nominating
Horace Greeley in 1872. The Democratic
Party attempted to capitalize on this
divide in the GOP by co-nominating
Greeley under their party banner.
Greeley's positions proved inconsistent
with the Liberal Republican Party that
nominated him, with Greeley supporting
high tariffs despite the party's
opposition. Grant was easily
re-elected.
The 1876 general
election saw a contentious conclusion as
both parties claimed victory despite
three southern states still not
officially declaring a winner at the end
of election day. Voter suppression had
occurred in the south to depress the
black and white Republican vote, which
gave Republican-controlled returning
officers enough of a reason to declare
that fraud, intimidation and violence
had soiled the states' results. They
proceeded to throw out enough Democratic
votes for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
to be declared the winner. Still,
Democrats refused to accept the results
and an Electoral Commission made up of
members of Congress was established to
decide who would be awarded the states'
electors. After the Commission voted
along party lines in Hayes' favor,
Democrats threatened to delay the
counting of electoral votes indefinitely
so no president would be inaugurated on
March 4. This resulted in the Compromise
of 1877 and Hayes finally became
president.
Hayes doubled down on
the gold standard, which had been signed
into law by Grant with the Coinage Act
of 1873, as a solution to the depressed
American economy in the aftermath of the
Panic of 1873. He also believed
greenbacks posed a threat; greenbacks
being money printed during the Civil War
that was not backed by specie, which
Hayes objected to as a proponent of hard
money. Hayes sought to restock the
country's gold supply, which by January
1879 succeeded as gold was more
frequently exchanged for greenbacks
compared to greenbacks being exchanged
for gold. Ahead of the 1880 general
election, Republican James G. Blaine ran
for the party nomination supporting
Hayes' gold standard push and supporting
his civil reforms. Both falling short of
the nomination, Blaine and opponent John
Sherman backed Republican James A.
Garfield, who agreed with Hayes' move in
favor of the gold standard, but opposed
his civil reform efforts.
Garfield was elected but assassinated
early into his term, however his death
helped create support for the Pendleton
Civil Service Reform Act, which was
passed in 1883; the bill was signed into
law by Republican President Chester A.
Arthur, who succeeded Garfield.
Blaine once again ran for the
presidency, winning the nomination but
losing to Democrat Grover Cleveland in
1884, the first Democrat to be elected
president since Buchanan. Dissident
Republicans, known as Mugwumps, had
defected Blaine due to corruption which
had plagued his political career.
Cleveland stuck to the gold standard
policy, which eased most Republicans,
but he came into conflict with the party
regarding budding American
imperialism.[79] Republican Benjamin
Harrison was able to reclaim the
presidency from Cleveland in 1888.
During his presidency, Harrison signed
the Dependent and Disability Pension
Act, which established pensions for all
veterans of the Union who had served for
more than 90 days and were unable to
perform manual labor.
A majority
of Republicans supported the annexation
of Hawaii, under the new governance of
Republican Sanford B. Dole, and
Harrison, following his loss in 1892 to
Cleveland, attempted to pass a treaty
annexing Hawaii before Cleveland was to
be inaugurated again. Cleveland opposed
annexation, though Democrats were split
geographically on the issue, with most
northeastern Democrats proving to be the
strongest voices of opposition.
In 1896,
Republican William McKinley's platform
supported the gold standard and high
tariffs, having been the creator and
namesake for the McKinley Tariff of
1890. Though having been divided on the
issue prior to the 1896 Republican
National Convention, McKinley decided to
heavily favor the gold standard over
free silver in his campaign messaging,
but promised to continue bimetallism to
ward off continued skepticism over the
gold standard, which had lingered since
the Panic of 1893.[83][84] Democrat
William Jennings Bryan proved to be a
devoted adherent to the free silver
movement, which cost Bryan the support
of Democrat institutions such as Tammany
Hall, the New York World and a large
majority of the Democratic Party's upper
and middle-class support. McKinley
defeated Bryan and returned the White
House to Republican control until 1912.
First half of the 20th century
Progressives vs. Standpatters
The
1896 realignment cemented the
Republicans as the party of big
businesses while Theodore Roosevelt
added more small business support by his
embrace of trust busting. He handpicked
his successor William Howard Taft in
1908, but they became enemies as the
party split down the middle. Taft
defeated Roosevelt for the 1912
nomination so Roosevelt stormed out of
the convention and started a new party.
Roosevelt ran on the ticket of his new
Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party. He
called for social reforms, many of which
were later championed by New Deal
Democrats in the 1930s. He lost and when
most of his supporters returned to the
GOP they found they did not agree with
the new conservative economic thinking,
leading to an ideological shift to the
right in the Republican Party.[86]
The Republicans returned to the
White House throughout the 1920s,
running on platforms of normalcy,
business-oriented efficiency and high
tariffs. The national party platform
avoided mention of prohibition, instead
issuing a vague commitment to law and
order.[87]
Warren G. Harding,
Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were
resoundingly elected in 1920, 1924 and
1928, respectively. The Teapot Dome
scandal threatened to hurt the party,
but Harding died and the opposition
splintered in 1924. The pro-business
policies of the decade seemed to produce
an unprecedented prosperity until the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 heralded the
Great Depression.[88]
Roosevelt and
the New Deal era
The New Deal
coalition forged by Democrat Franklin D.
Roosevelt controlled American politics
for most of the next three decades,
excluding the two-term presidency of
Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. After
Roosevelt took office in 1933, New Deal
legislation sailed through Congress and
the economy moved sharply upward from
its nadir in early 1933. However,
long-term unemployment remained a drag
until 1940. In the 1934 midterm
elections, 10 Republican senators went
down to defeat, leaving the GOP with
only 25 senators against 71 Democrats.
The House of Representatives likewise
had overwhelming Democratic
majorities.[89]
The Republican
Party factionalized into a majority "Old
Right" (based in the midwest) and a
liberal wing based in the northeast that
supported much of the New Deal. The Old
Right sharply attacked the "Second New
Deal" and said it represented class
warfare and socialism. Roosevelt was
re-elected in a landslide in 1936;
however, as his second term began, the
economy declined, strikes soared, and he
failed to take control of the Supreme
Court and purge the southern
conservatives from the Democratic Party.
Republicans made a major comeback in the
1938 elections and had new rising stars
such as Robert A. Taft of Ohio on the
right and Thomas E. Dewey of New York on
the left.[90] Southern conservatives
joined with most Republicans to form the
conservative coalition, which dominated
domestic issues in Congress until 1964.
Both parties split on foreign policy
issues, with the anti-war isolationists
dominant in the Republican Party and the
interventionists who wanted to stop
Adolf Hitler dominant in the Democratic
Party. Roosevelt won a third and fourth
term in 1940 and 1944, respectively.
Conservatives abolished most of the New
Deal during the war, but they did not
attempt to do away with Social Security
or the agencies that regulated
business.[91]
Historian George H.
Nash argues:
Unlike the
"moderate", internationalist, largely
eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted
(or at least acquiesced in) some of the
"Roosevelt Revolution" and the essential
premises of President Harry S. Truman's
foreign policy, the Republican Right at
heart was counterrevolutionary.
Anti-collectivist, anti-Communist,
anti-New Deal, passionately committed to
limited government, free market
economics, and congressional (as opposed
to executive) prerogatives, the G.O.P.
conservatives were obliged from the
start to wage a constant two-front war:
against liberal Democrats from without
and "me-too" Republicans from
within.[92]
After 1945, the
internationalist wing of the GOP
cooperated with Truman's Cold War
foreign policy, funded the Marshall Plan
and supported NATO, despite the
continued isolationism of the Old
Right.[93]
Second half of the 20th
century
Post-Roosevelt era (1945
1964)
The second half of the 20th
century saw the election or succession
of Republican presidents Dwight D.
Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford,
Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
Eisenhower had defeated conservative
leader Senator Robert A. Taft for the
1952 nomination, but conservatives
dominated the domestic policies of the
Eisenhower administration. Voters liked
Eisenhower much more than they liked the
GOP and he proved unable to shift the
party to a more moderate position. Since
1976, liberalism has virtually faded out
of the Republican Party, apart from a
few northeastern holdouts.
From
Goldwater to Reagan (1964 1980)
Historians cite the 1964 United States
presidential election and its respective
1964 Republican National Convention as a
significant shift, which saw the
conservative wing, helmed by Senator
Barry Goldwater of Arizona, battle the
liberal New York Governor Nelson
Rockefeller and his eponymous
Rockefeller Republican faction for the
party presidential nomination. With
Goldwater poised to win, Rockefeller,
urged to mobilize his liberal faction,
relented, "You're looking at it, buddy.
I'm all that's left." Though
Goldwater lost in a landslide, Reagan
would make himself known as a prominent
supporter of his throughout the
campaign, delivering the "A Time for
Choosing" speech for him. He'd go on to
become governor of California two years
later, and in 1980, win the presidency.
Reagan era (1980 994)
The presidency of Reagan, lasting
from 1981 to 1989, constituted what is
known as the "Reagan Revolution'.[98] It
was seen as a fundamental shift from the
stagflation of the 1970s preceding it,
with the introduction of Reaganomics
intended to cut taxes, prioritize
government deregulation and shift
funding from the domestic sphere into
the military to check the Soviet Union
by utilizing deterrence theory. During a
visit to then-West Berlin in June 1987,
he addressed Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev during a speech at the Berlin
Wall, demanding that he "tear down this
wall". The remark was ignored at the
time but after the fall of the wall in
1989 retroactively recast as a soaring
achievement over the years.
After he left office in 1989, Reagan
became an iconic conservative
Republican. Republican presidential
candidates would frequently claim to
share his views and aim to establish
themselves and their policies as the
more appropriate heir to his legacy.
Vice President Bush scored a landslide
in the 1988 general election. However
his term would see a divide form within
the Republican Party. Bush's vision of
economic liberalization and
international cooperation with foreign
nations saw the negotiation and signing
of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and the conceptual
beginnings of the World Trade
Organization. Independent politician and
businessman Ross Perot decried NAFTA and
prophesied it would lead to outsourcing
American jobs to Mexico, while Democrat
Bill Clinton found agreement in Bush's
policies. Bush lost reelection in 1992
with 37 percent of the popular vote,
with Clinton garnering a plurality of 43
percent and Perot in third with 19
percent. While debatable if Perot's
candidacy cost Bush reelection, Charlie
Cook of The Cook Political Report
attests Perot's messaging held more
weight with Republican and conservative
voters at-large. Perot formed the Reform
Party and those who had been or would
become prominent Republicans saw brief
membership, such as former White House
Communications Director Pat Buchanan and
later President Donald Trump.
Gingrich Revolution
(1994 2000)
Official portrait of
Speaker Gingrich
In the
Republican Revolution of 1994, the
party led by House Minority Whip Newt
Gingrich, who campaigned on the
"Contract with America" won
majorities in both chambers of Congress,
gained 12 governorships and regained
control of 20 state legislatures.
However, most voters had not heard of
the Contract and the Republican victory
was attributed to traditional mid-term
anti-incumbent voting and Republicans
becoming the majority party in Dixie for
the first time since
Reconstruction.[105] It was the first
time the Republican Party had achieved a
majority in the House since 1952.
Gingrich was made Speaker of the House,
and within the first 100 days of the
Republican majority every proposition
featured in the Contract with America
was passed, with the exception of term
limits for members of Congress, which
did not pass in the Senate. One key to
Gingrich's success in 1994 was
nationalizing the election, which in
turn led to Gingrich's becoming a
national figure during the 1996 House
elections, with many Democratic leaders
proclaiming Gingrich was a zealous
radical. The Republicans maintained
their majority for the first time since
1928 despite the presidential ticket of
Bob Dole-Jack Kemp losing handily to
President Clinton in the general
election. However, Gingrich's national
profile proved a detriment to the
Republican Congress, which enjoyed
majority approval among voters in spite
of Gingrich's relative unpopularity.
After Gingrich
and the Republicans struck a deal with
Clinton on the Balanced Budget Act of
1997 with added tax cuts included, the
Republican House majority had difficulty
convening on a new agenda ahead of the
1998 midterm elections. During the
ongoing impeachment of Bill Clinton in
1998, Gingrich decided to make Clinton's
misconduct the party message heading
into the midterms, believing it would
add to their majority. The strategy
proved mistaken and the Republicans lost
five seats, though whether it was due to
poor messaging or Clinton's popularity
providing a coattail effect is
debated. Gingrich was ousted from
party power due to the performance,
ultimately deciding to resign from
Congress altogether. For a short time
afterward, it appeared Louisiana
Representative Bob Livingston would
become his successor; Livingston,
however, stepped down from consideration
and resigned from Congress after
damaging reports of affairs threatened
the Republican House's legislative
agenda if he were to serve as
Speaker. Illinois Representative Dennis
Hastert was promoted to Speaker in
Livingston's place, and served in that
position until 2007.
21st
century
George W. Bush (2001 2009)
A Republican ticket of George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney won the 2000 and
2004 presidential elections. Bush
campaigned as a "compassionate
conservative" in 2000, wanting to better
appeal to immigrants and minority
voters. The goal was to prioritize drug
rehabilitation programs and aid for
prisoner reentry into society, a move
intended to capitalize on President Bill
Clinton's tougher crime initiatives such
as his administration's 1994 crime bill.
The platform failed to gain much
traction among members of the party
during his presidency.
With
the inauguration of Bush as president,
the Republican Party remained fairly
cohesive for much of the 2000s, as both
strong economic libertarians and social
conservatives opposed the Democrats,
whom they saw as the party of bloated,
secular, and liberal government.
This period saw the rise of
"pro-government conservatives" a core
part of the Bush's base a considerable
group of the Republicans who advocated
for increased government spending and
greater regulations covering both the
economy and people's personal lives, as
well as for an activist and
interventionist foreign policy.
Survey groups such as the Pew Research
Center found that social conservatives
and free market advocates remained the
other two main groups within the party's
coalition of support, with all three
being roughly equal in number.
However, libertarians and
libertarian-leaning conservatives
increasingly found fault with what they
saw as Republicans' restricting of vital
civil liberties while corporate welfare
and the national debt hiked considerably
under Bush's tenure. In contrast, some
social conservatives expressed
dissatisfaction with the party's support
for economic policies that conflicted
with their moral values.
The
Republican Party lost its Senate
majority in 2001 when the Senate became
split evenly; nevertheless, the
Republicans maintained control of the
Senate due to the tie-breaking vote of
Vice President Cheney. Democrats gained
control of the Senate on June 6, 2001,
when Republican Senator Jim Jeffords of
Vermont switched his party affiliation
to Democrat. The Republicans regained
the Senate majority in the 2002
elections, and Republican majorities in
the House and Senate were held until the
Democrats regained control of both
chambers in the mid-term elections of
2006.
George H. W. Bush
was the father of George W. Bush. (Only
one other son of a president has been
elected president, to wit John Quincy
Adams.)
In 2008, Republican
Senator John McCain of Arizona and
Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska were
defeated by Democratic Senators Barack
Obama and Joe Biden of Illinois and
Delaware, respectively.
Modernity (2010 present)
Tea Party
movement (2010 2016)
The
Republicans experienced electoral
success in the wave election of 2010,
which coincided with the ascendancy of
the Tea Party movement, an anti-Obama
protest movement of fiscal
conservatives.[130] Members of the
movement called for lower taxes, and for
a reduction of the national debt of the
United States and federal budget deficit
through decreased government spending.
It was also described as a popular
constitutional movement composed of a
mixture of libertarian, right-wing
populist, and conservative activism.
That success began with the upset win of
Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special
Senate election for a seat that had been
held for decades by the Democratic
Kennedy brothers. In the November
elections, Republicans recaptured
control of the House, increased their
number of seats in the Senate and gained
a majority of governorships. The Tea
Party would go on to strongly influence
the Republican Party, in part due to the
replacement of establishment Republicans
with Tea Party-style Republicans.
When Obama and
Biden won re-election in 2012, defeating
a Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket, the
Republicans lost seven seats in the
House in the November congressional
elections, but still retained control of
that chamber. However, Republicans were
not able to gain control of the Senate,
continuing their minority status with a
net loss of two seats. In
the aftermath of the loss, some
prominent Republicans spoke out against
their own party. A 2012
election post-mortem by the Republican
Party concluded that the party needed to
do more on the national level to attract
votes from minorities and young
voters. In March 2013, National
Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gave a
stinging report on the party's electoral
failures in 2012, calling on Republicans
to reinvent themselves and officially
endorse immigration reform. He said:
"There's no one reason we lost. Our
message was weak; our ground game was
insufficient; we weren't inclusive; we
were behind in both data and digital,
and our primary and debate process
needed improvement." He proposed 219
reforms, including a $10 million
marketing campaign to reach women,
minority demographics, and gay people,
the setting of a shorter, more
controlled primary season, and creating
better data collection facilities.
Following the 2014 midterm
elections, the Republican Party took
control of the Senate by gaining nine
seats.[146] With a final total of 247
seats (57%) in the House and 54 seats in
the Senate, the Republicans ultimately
achieved their largest majority in the
Congress since the 71st Congress in
1929.
Donald Trump presidency
(2016 2020)
Donald Trump, 45th
president of the United States (2017
2021)
The election of Republican
Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016
marked a populist shift in the
Republican Party.[148] Trump's defeat of
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was
unexpected, as polls had shown Clinton
leading the race.Trump's victory
was fueled by narrow victories in three
states Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin that had traditionally been
part of the Democratic blue wall for
decades. According to NBC News, "Trump's
power famously came from his 'silent
majority 'working-class white voters who
felt mocked and ignored by an
establishment, loosely defined by
special interests in Washington, news
outlets in New York and tastemakers in
Hollywood. He built trust within that
base by abandoning Republican
establishment orthodoxy on issues like
trade and government spending in favor
of a broader nationalist message".
After the 2016 elections, Republicans
maintained a majority in the Senate,
House, and state governorships, and
wielded newly acquired executive power
with Trump's election as president. The
Republican Party controlled 69 of 99
state legislative chambers in 2017, the
most it had held in history; and at
least 33 governorships, the most it had
held since 1922. The party had total
control of government (legislative
chambers and governorship) in 25 states,
the most since 1952; the opposing
Democratic Party had full control in
only five states. Following the results
of the 2018 midterm elections, the
Republicans lost control of the House
but strengthened their hold of the
Senate.
Over the course of
his term, Trump appointed three justices
to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch,
Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett
the most appointments of any president
in a single term since fellow Republican
Richard Nixon. He appointed 260
judges in total, creating overall
Republican-appointed majorities on every
branch of the federal judiciary except
for the Court of International Trade by
the time he left office, shifting the
judiciary to the right. Other notable
achievements during his presidency
included the passing of the Tax Cuts and
Jobs Act in 2017, the creation of the
United States Space Force the first
new independent military service since
1947 and the brokering of the Abraham
Accords, a series of normalization
agreements between Israel and various
Arab states. The Republican Party did
not produce an official party platform
ahead of the 2020 elections, instead
simply endorsing "the President's
America-first agenda", which prompted
comparisons to contemporary
leader-focused party platforms in Russia
and China. Trump was impeached by the
House of Representatives on December 18,
2019, on the charges of abuse of power
and obstruction of Congress. He was
acquitted by the Senate on February 5,
2020. Trump lost reelection to Joe Biden
in 2020 but refused to concede, claiming
widespread electoral fraud and
attempting to overturn the results, to
which many attribute the U.S. Capitol
being attacked by his supporters on
January 6, 2021. Following the attack,
the House impeached Trump for a second
time on the charge of incitement of
insurrection, making him the only
federal officeholder in the history of
the United States to be impeached twice.
He left office on January 20, 2021, but
the impeachment trial continued into the
early weeks of the Biden administration,
with Trump ultimately being acquitted a
second time by the Senate on February
13, 2021.
Joe Biden presidency
(2021 present)
In 2022, Supreme
Court justices appointed by Trump proved
decisive in landmark decisions on gun
rights and abortion. Republicans went
into that year's midterm elections
confident and with most election
analysts predicting a red wave, but the
party underperformed heavily, with
voters in swing states and competitive
districts joining Democrats in rejecting
candidates endorsed by Trump or that
denied the results of the 2020 election.
The party won the House but with a
narrow majority when a large one had
been expected for most of the cycle, and
lost the Senate, leading to many
Republicans and conservative thought
leaders questioning whether Trump should
continue as the party's main figurehead
and leader. Florida governor
Ron DeSantis, who won reelection in a
historic landslide and was considered by
many analysts as the midterms' biggest
winner, was the most frequently
discussed name as the future party
leader.
Name and symbols
1874 Nast cartoon featuring the
first notable appearance of the
Republican elephant
The red,
white and blue Republican elephant,
still a primary logo for many state GOP
committees
The circa 2013 GOP
banner logo
More recent GOP
banner logo
The party's founding
members chose the name Republican Party
in the mid-1850s as homage to the values
of republicanism promoted by Thomas
Jefferson's Democratic-Republican
Party.[184] The idea for the name came
from an editorial by the party's leading
publicist, Horace Greeley, who called
for "some simple name like 'Republican'
[that] would more fitly designate those
who had united to restore the Union to
its true mission of champion and
promulgator of Liberty rather than
propagandist of slavery". The name
reflects the 1776 republican values of
civic virtue and opposition to
aristocracy and corruption.[186] It is
important to note that "republican" has
a variety of meanings around the world,
and the Republican Party has evolved
such that the meanings no longer always
align.
The term "Grand Old Party"
is a traditional nickname for the
Republican Party, and the abbreviation
"GOP" is a commonly used designation.
The term originated in 1875 in the
Congressional Record, referring to the
party associated with the successful
military defense of the Union as "this
gallant old party". The following year
in an article in the Cincinnati
Commercial, the term was modified to
"grand old party". The first use of the
abbreviation is dated 1884.
The
traditional mascot of the party is the
elephant. A political cartoon by Thomas
Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on
November 7, 1874, is considered the
first important use of the symbol. An
alternate symbol of the Republican Party
in states such as Indiana, New York and
Ohio is the bald eagle as opposed to the
Democratic rooster or the Democratic
five-pointed star. In Kentucky, the log
cabin is a symbol of the Republican
Party.
Traditionally the party had no
consistent color identity. After the
2000 election, the color red became
associated with Republicans. During and
after the election, the major broadcast
networks used the same color scheme for
the electoral map: states won by
Republican nominee George W. Bush were
colored red and states won by Democratic
nominee Al Gore were colored blue. Due
to the weeks-long dispute over the
election results, these color
associations became firmly ingrained,
persisting in subsequent years. Although
the assignment of colors to political
parties is unofficial and informal, the
media has come to represent the
respective political parties using these
colors. The party and its candidates
have also come to embrace the color red.
Factions
Current
Ronald Reagan speaks for presidential
candidate Goldwater in Los Angeles,
1964. Symbolic of the conservative
(Reagan) and libertarian (Goldwater)
factions of the party.
The
Republican Party includes several
factions. In the 21st century,
Republican factions include
conservatives, centrists,
right-libertarians, and populists. There
are significant divisions within the
party on the issues of abortion,
same-sex marriage, and free trade.[198]
Conservatives
Since Ronald
Reagan's presidential election in 1980,
American conservatism has been the
dominant faction of the Republican
Party. Most modern conservatives combine
support for free-market economic
policies with social conservatism and a
hawkish approach to foreign policy.[26]
They generally support policies that
favor limited government, individualism,
traditionalism, republicanism, and
limited federal governmental power in
relation to the states.
Right-libertarians
The Republican
Party has a significant
right-libertarian faction. Barry
Goldwater had a substantial impact on
the conservative-libertarian movement of
the 1960s. Compared to other
Republicans, they are more likely to
favor the legalization of marijuana,
LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage,
gun rights, oppose mass surveillance,
and support reforms to current laws
surrounding civil asset forfeiture.
Right-wing libertarians are strongly
divided on the subject of abortion.
Prominent libertarian conservatives
within the Republican Party include New
Hampshire Governor Chris
Sununu,[citation needed] Utah Senator
Mike Lee, Kentucky Representative Thomas
Massie and
Senator Rand Paul, along with Wyoming
senator Cynthia Lummis.
Religious right
Since the rise of
the Christian right in the 1970s, the
Republican Party has drawn significant
support from traditionalist Roman
Catholics and evangelicals partly due to
opposition to abortion after Roe v.
Wade.[208][45] Compared to other
Republicans, the religious right and
right-wing populist faction of the party
is more likely to oppose LGBT rights and
marijuana legalization.
Since the
1967 Six Day War,[209] the Christian
right has generally supported close ties
between the United States and Israel,
although this has changed since the
mid-2010s to some extent. Support for
Israel is significantly less among
younger evangelicals. Between 2018 and
2021, support for Israel among
evangelicals aged 18-29 dropped from 75%
to 34%. A growing minority of
evangelicals have identified as
anti-Zionist.
Right-wing
populists
Since the election of
Donald Trump, factions of the Republican
Party can be characterized as right-wing
populist. The role of the Tea Party in
paving the way for the faction is a
subject of debate. Compared to other
Republicans, the right-wing populist
faction is more likely to oppose legal
immigration,[216] free trade, neoconservatism, and
environmental protection laws.[219]
Prominent examples include Donald Trump,
Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor
Greene.
Lilliana Mason, associate
professor of political science at Johns
Hopkins University, states that Donald
Trump solidified the trend among
Southern white conservative Democrats
since the 1960s of leaving the
Democratic Party and joining the
Republican Party: "Trump basically
worked as a lightning rod to finalize
that process of creating the Republican
Party as a single entity for defending
the high status of white, Christian,
rural Americans. It's not a huge
percentage of Americans that holds these
beliefs, and it's not even the entire
Republican Party; it's just about half
of it. But the party itself is
controlled by this intolerant, very
strongly pro-Trump faction."
Moderate Republicans
Notable
moderate Republicans include incumbent
Vermont governor Phil Scott, former
Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker,
and former Maryland governor Larry
Hogan.
Historical
Civil War and Reconstruction era
(1861 1876)
During the 19th
century, Republican factions included
the Radical Republicans. They were a
major factor of the party from its
inception in 1854 until the end of the
Reconstruction Era in 1877. They
strongly opposed slavery, were hard-line
abolitionists, and later advocated equal
rights for the freedmen and women.
Predominately, they were heavily
influenced by religious ideals and
evangelical Christianity; many were
Christian reformers who saw slavery as
evil and the Civil War as God's
punishment for it.[225] Radical
Republicans pressed for abolition as a
major war aim and they opposed the
moderate Reconstruction plans of Abraham
Lincoln as both too lenient on the
Confederates and not going far enough to
help former slaves who had been freed
during or after the Civil War by the
Emancipation Proclamation and the
Thirteenth Amendment. After the war's
end and Lincoln's assassination, the
Radicals clashed with Andrew Johnson
over Reconstruction policy. Radicals led
efforts after the war to establish civil
rights for former slaves and fully
implement emancipation. After
unsuccessful measures in 1866 resulted
in violence against former slaves in the
rebel states, Radicals pushed the
Fourteenth Amendment for statutory
protections through Congress. They
opposed allowing ex-Confederate officers
to retake political power in the
Southern U.S., and emphasized liberty,
equality, and the Fifteenth Amendment
which provided voting rights for the
freedmen. Many later became Stalwarts,
who supported machine politics.
Moderate Republicans were known for
their loyal support of President Abraham
Lincoln's war policies and expressed
antipathy towards the more militant
stances advocated by the Radical
Republicans. According to historian Eric
Foner, congressional leaders of the
faction were James G. Blaine, John A.
Bingham, William P. Fessenden, Lyman
Trumbull, and John Sherman. In contrast
to Radicals, Moderate Republicans were
less enthusiastic on the issue of black
suffrage even while embracing civil
equality and the expansive federal
authority observed throughout the
American Civil War. They were also
skeptical of the lenient, conciliatory
Reconstruction policies of President
Andrew Johnson. Members of the Moderate
Republicans comprised in part of
previous Radical Republicans who became
disenchanted with the alleged corruption
of the latter faction. Charles Sumner, a
Massachusetts senator who led Radical
Republicans in the 1860s, later joined
reform-minded moderates as he later
opposed the corruption associated with
the Grant administration. They generally
opposed efforts by Radical Republicans
to rebuild the Southern U.S. under an
economically mobile, free-market system.
20th century
In
the 20th century, Republican factions
included the Progressive Republicans,
the Reagan coalition, and the liberal
Rockefeller Republicans.
Political
positions
Economic policies
Republicans believe that free markets
and individual achievement are the
primary factors behind economic
prosperity. Republicans frequently
advocate in favor of fiscal conservatism
during Democratic administrations;
however, they have shown themselves
willing to increase federal debt when
they are in charge of the government
(the implementation of the Bush tax
cuts, Medicare Part D and the Tax Cuts
and Jobs Act of 2017 are examples of
this willingness). Despite pledges to
roll back government spending,
Republican administrations have, since
the late 1960s, sustained or increased
previous levels of government spending.
Taxes
The modern Republican Party's economic
policy positions, as measured by votes
in Congress, tend to align with business
interests and the affluent. Modern
Republicans advocate the theory of
supply-side economics, which holds that
lower tax rates increase economic
growth. Many Republicans oppose higher
tax rates for higher earners, which they
believe are unfairly targeted at those
who create jobs and wealth. They believe
private spending is more efficient than
government spending. Republican
lawmakers have also sought to limit
funding for tax enforcement and tax
collection. At the national level and
state level, Republicans tend to pursue
policies of tax cuts and deregulation.
Republicans believe individuals should
take responsibility for their own
circumstances. They also believe the
private sector is more effective in
helping the poor through charity than
the government is through welfare
programs and that social assistance
programs often cause government
dependency. As of November 2022, all
eleven States that have not expanded
Medicaid have Republican-controlled
state legislatures.
Labor unions
Republicans believe corporations
should be able to establish their own
employment practices, including benefits
and wages, with the free market deciding
the price of work. Since the 1920s,
Republicans have generally been opposed
by labor union organizations and
members. At the national level,
Republicans supported the Taft Hartley
Act of 1947, which gives workers the
right not to participate in unions.
Modern Republicans at the state level
generally support various right-to-work
laws, which prohibit union security
agreements requiring all workers in a
unionized workplace to pay dues or a
fair-share fee, regardless of whether
they are members of the union or not