American political party From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"GOP" redirects here. For other uses, see GOP (disambiguation).
The United States Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party) is one of the two biggestpolitical parties in the United States. Since the mid-1850s, the party's main opponent has been the Democratic Party. Both political parties have controlled American politics ever since.
The party sits at the right-wing of the American political spectrum, with the Democratic Party being positioned to their left. However, there also factions of the Republican Party that are center-right to far-right. One of the most famous far-right members of the party is Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
The symbol of the Republican party is the elephant. This symbol was first used in 1874 in a political cartoon by Thomas Nast.[28]
The Republican National Committee, or the RNC, is the main organization for the Republican Party in all 50 states. The Republican Party is not the same political party as the Democratic-Republican Party. A state where most voters vote for Republican politicians is called a red state.
1874 cartoon in Harpers Weekly, first use of the elephant as symbol for the Republican party.
The Republican Party was founded in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1853,[29] with the help of Francis Preston Blair. The Republican Party was formed by people who did not like the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which would let each territory allow slavery. The Republican Party was founded by past members of the Free Soil Party and the Whig Party who wanted to stop the expansion of slavery. The founders of the Republican Party wanted to stop the expansion of slavery because they believed it was against the ideals of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Some founders of the Republican Party wanted to abolish slavery everywhere in the United States. The Republican Party's first candidate for president of the United States was John C. Frémont in 1856.
As the Whig Party collapsed, the Republicans became one of two major political parties in the United States (the Democratic Party was the other major political party). In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, was elected. For the rest of the second half of the 19th century, the country had mostly Republican presidents. From 1860 until 1912 the Republicans lost the presidential election just twice (non-consecutively to Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892).
Republicans believed in protectionism (the belief that raising taxes on trades with other countries would protect the economy) during the second half of the 19th century and during the early half of the 20th century.
After World War I, the 1920s had three Republican presidents: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. It was called the Republican Decade for that reason. Harding and Coolidge made a plan for the economy which lowered taxes, made the government spend less money, and got rid of rules and laws that affected the economy.
Near the end of the 1920s, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. During the Great Depression, the Republican Party became less popular. No Republicans were president between 1933 and 1953, when Dwight Eisenhower began his first of two consecutive terms as president (he was re-elected in 1956). Richard Nixon lost the election in 1960, but was elected president on the Republican ticket in 1968 and again in 1972.
Ronald Reagan, an actor and conservative political activist, was elected as president in 1980. Ronald Reagan became the first Republican president who was a former member of the Democratic Party. Ronald Reagan served two terms and his successor George H.W. Bush served one term. Reagan wanted fewer laws to affect the economy, and wanted the military to be stronger.
After elections held in 2006, Republicans lost control of Congress. Democrat Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. Republican John Boehner was elected the Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2010 and re-elected in 2012. In 2014, Republicans gained control of the Senate and the House. Boehner resigned in early October 2015 and was eventually succeeded by Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on October 29, 2015. On November 9, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College. Trump was the first Republican to take office as president since January 20, 2001, when George W. Bush was inaugurated. The Republicans lost the House and won the Senate in 2018. Paul Ryan retired in 2019 and was succeeded by Nancy Pelosi, who is a member of the Democratic Party.
In 2020, the Republicans lost the presidency when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. In 2022, they were able to get control back of the House of Representatives, but not the Senate.
Most supporters for the Republican Party come from states in the Southern, Deep South, parts of the Midwest, and the rural Northeast areas of the US, as well as from Montana; though they come from all over the United States, including the northern portion of California.
Thomas Dewey (Presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948)
Bob Dole (presidential candidate in 1996, former Senator from Kansas)
Elizabeth Dole (former Senator from North Carolina, former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President George Bush, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation under President Reagan)
The Log Cabin Republicans were first recognized by the Republican National Committee (RNC) as an affiliated, non-RNC controlled LGBT wing in November 2021. Simultaneously during the announcement, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel announced that a RNC-led "Republican Pride Coalition" would be established for future upcoming elections.[9]
Lewis, Andrew R. (August 28, 2019). "The Inclusion-Moderation Thesis: The U.S. Republican Party and the Christian Right". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.665. ISBN978-0-19-022863-7. Considering all the evidence, the most apt description is that conservative Christianity has transformed the Republican Party, and the Republican Party has transformed conservative Christianity ... With its inclusion in the Republican Party, the Christian right has moderated on some aspects ... At the same time, the Christian right has altered Republican politics.
Perry, Samuel L. (2022). "American Religion in the Era of Increasing Polarization". Annual Review of Sociology. 48 (1). San Mateo, California: Annual Reviews: 87–107. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-031021-114239. ISSN0360-0572. p.91: Unaffiliated Americans were not abandoning orthodox beliefs, but rather, the increase in "no religion" was confined to political moderates and liberals who were likely reacting to the growing alignment of Christian identity with the religious Right and Republicans.3
Trollinger, William (October 8, 2019). "Fundamentalism turns 100, a landmark for the Christian Right". The Conversation. ISSN2201-5639. Archived from the original on May 7, 2022. Retrieved July 3, 2022. The emergent Christian Right attached itself to the Republican Party, which was more aligned with its members' central commitments than the Democrats ... By the time Falwell died, in 2007, the Christian Right had become the most important constituency in the Republican Party. It played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump in 2016.
Thomson-DeVeaux, Amelia (October 27, 2022). "How Much Power Do Christians Really Have?". FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on April 10, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2024. In the 1980s and 1990s, as white Christian conservatives forged an alliance with the Republican Party, Christianity itself started to become a partisan symbol. Identifying as a Christian was no longer just about theology, community or family history — to many Americans, the label became uncomfortably tangled with the Christian Right's political agenda, which was itself becoming increasingly hard to separate from the GOP's political agenda.
Wilbur, Miller (2012). "Libertarianism". The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. Vol.3. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. pp.1006–1007. ISBN978-1-4129-8876-6. While right-libertarianism has been equated with libertarianism in general in the United States, left-libertarianism has become a more predominant aspect of politics in western European democracies over the past three decades. ... Since the 1950s, libertarianism in the United States has been associated almost exclusively with right-libertarianism ... As such, right-libertarianism in the United States remains a fruitful discourse with which to articulate conservative claims, even as it lacks political efficacy as a separate ideology. However, even without its own movement, libertarian sensibility informs numerous social movements in the United States, including the U.S. patriot movement, the gun-rights movement, and the incipient Tea Party movement.
Keckler, Charles; Rozell, Mark J. (April 3, 2015). "The Libertarian Right and the Religious Right". Perspectives on Political Science. 44 (2): 92–99. doi:10.1080/10457097.2015.1011476. To better understand the structure of cooperation and competition between these groups, we construct an anatomy of the American center-right, which identifies them as incipient factions within the conservative movement and its political instrument, the Republican Party.
Donovan, Todd (October 2, 2019). "Authoritarian attitudes and support for radical right populists". Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties. 29 (4): 448–464. doi:10.1080/17457289.2019.1666270. A strict two-party system, such as the United States, does not fit the tripolar logic. If authoritarian attitudes exist in an electorate that effectively has no potential for anything but a choice between one centre-left and one centre-right party, people with such attitudes may find a place in one of the two dominant parties.
Cooperman, Rosalyn; Shufeldt, Gregory; Conger, Kimberly (May 2022). "The life of the parties: Party activists and the 2016 presidential election". Party Politics. 28 (3): 3. doi:10.1177/1354068820988635. The most relevant distinctions within the parties' activist bases are likely to be between the most conservative Republicans and center-right Republicans and between the most liberal Democrats and center-left Democrats. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats no longer exist within either party's activist base.[not in the source given]
Carter, Neil; Keith, Daniel; Vasilopoulou, Sofia; Sindre, Gyda M. (March 8, 2023). The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties. p.140. doi:10.4324/9780429263859. ISBN978-0-429-26385-9. A primary driver of comparisons between the USA and other Anglosphere centre-right parties appears to be cultural and language affinities.
McKay, David (2020), Crewe, Ivor; Sanders, David (eds.), "Facilitating Donald Trump: Populism, the Republican Party and Media Manipulation", Authoritarian Populism and Liberal Democracy, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp.107–121, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-17997-7_7, ISBN978-3-030-17997-7, retrieved 2024-06-13, the Republicans changed from being a right of centre coalition of moderates and conservatives to an unambiguously right-wing party that was hostile not only to liberal views but also to any perspective that clashed with the core views of an ideologically cohesive conservative cadre of party faithfuls
Greenberg, David (2021-01-27). "An Intellectual History of Trumpism". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 2024-06-13. The larger ideology that the president-elect represents is a post-Iraq War, post-crash, post-Barack Obama update of what used to be called paleoconservatism: On race and immigration, where the alt-right affinities are most pronounced, its populist ideas are carrying an already right-wing party even further right.
Wineinger, Catherine; Nugent, Mary K. (2020-01-02). "Framing Identity Politics: Right-Wing Women as Strategic Party Actors in the UK and US". Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. 41 (1): 5. doi:10.1080/1554477X.2020.1698214. ISSN1554-477X.
Jessoula, Matteo; Natili, Marcello; Pavolini, Emmanuele (8 August 2022). "'Exclusionary welfarism': a new programmatic agenda for populist right-wing parties?". Contemporary Politics. 28 (4): 447–449. doi:10.1080/13569775.2021.2011644. ISSN1356-9775.