Republican Party
| Republican Party | |
|---|---|
| |
| Party Chairman | Mike Duncan |
| Senate Leader | Mitch McConnell |
| House Speaker | |
| House Leader | John Boehner |
| Founded | 1854 |
| Headquarters | 310 K Street SE Washington, D.C. 20003 |
| Political ideology | Centrism Conservatism Fiscal conservatism Neoconservatism |
| Political position | Fiscal: Economic liberalism Social: Conservative |
| International affiliation | International Democrat Union |
| Color(s) | Red (unofficial) |
| Website | www.gop.com |
The Republican Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States. The current President of the United States, George W. Bush, is a member of the party – and by rules common to both major U.S. parties, its head. Of the two major U.S. parties, the Republican party is the moderate/center-right party. The party has been very successful in Presidential elections: 18 of the 27 US Presidents since 1861 have been Republicans and since that same year a Republican has won 23 of the last 37 presidential elections.
The party was born in the early 1850s by anti-slavery activists and individuals who believed that government should grant western lands to settlers free of charge. The first informal meeting of the party took place in Ripon, Wisconsin, a small town northwest of Milwaukee. The first official Republican meeting took place on July 6, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. The name "Republican" was chosen because it alluded to equality and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. At the Jackson convention, the new party adopted a platform and nominated candidates for office in Michigan. Since its inception, its chief opposition has been the Democratic Party.
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Symbol
The official symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. Although the elephant had occasionally been associated with the party earlier, a political cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874, is considered the first important use of the symbol[1]. In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Republican party in Midwestern states such as Indiana and Ohio was the eagle, as opposed to the Democratic cock. This symbol still appears on Indiana ballots.
A political term referring to the party is "G.O.P.", which was originally an acronym of "Grand Old Party". The term was coined in 1875.
Ideology
The fundamental philosophy and political ideals of the Republican Party are founded on the idea that societal health is rooted in personal responsibility and actions. The Republican Party holds the belief that all material things are earned, not owed. This is seen most often in the party's push for lower taxes. This is fought for in an attempt to treat all citizens equally despite income, race, gender, or religion. They also see taxes as a drag on the economy, and believe private spending is usually more efficient than public spending.
Republicans also show concerns about having big government in charge of such vital issues as food, shelter, or health care, as they believe the private sector and/or the individual are better suited to control their own lives. President Ronald Reagan who became a Republican in the early 1960s after being a New Dealer at one time, has been quoted as saying "Government is not the solution, it is the problem."
The party tends to hold both conservative and libertarian stances on social and economic issues respectively. Major policies that the party has recently supported include a conservative foreign policy, including War on Terror, liberations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and strong support for democracy especially in the Middle East. Many party members and politicians have shown a distrust of the United Nations due to the organization's incompetent bureaucracy, anti-capitalist undertone, corruption on the Security Council and in UN humanitarian programs. Along with demanding radical reforms in the UN, many Republican politicians also opposes the Kyoto Protocol due the protocol's unfair application to certain countries (especially the United States) and the fact that it prevents economic growth and slows the reduction of poverty.
The Republican Party generally supports free trade, especially NAFTA and CAFTA. It is responsible for a series of across-the-board tax cuts since 2001 that have bolstered the economy and reduced the punitive aspect of the income tax. It has sought business deregulation, reduction of environmental regulations that restrict fair use of land and property, and other policies that are pro-capitalism. It supports gun ownership rights, and enterprise zones (low taxes for investing in poverty areas). On social issues the majority of its national and state candidates usually favor the death penalty, call for stronger state-level control on access to abortion, support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage at the federal level and by the states, favor faith-based charitable initiatives, support school choice and homeschooling, social welfare benefit reform, and oppose reverse racism, such as racial quotas.
In recent years the party has called for much stronger accountability in the public schools, especially through the "No Child Left behind Act" of 2001 (which also increased federal funding for schools). The party is split on the issue of federally funding embryonic stem cell research that involves the cloning and killing of human embryos. Many in the party think it unethical to force tax payers who believe this type of research is morally wrong to finance it. Historically Republicans have had a strong belief in individualism, limited government, and business entrepreneurship.
History
Screw over the middle class by giving huge tax cuts to large corporations. Also believe in wackjob theories like Creationism.
Presidential dominance
In terms of winning presidential elections, the Republican Party has been the most successful political party in U.S. history. Since the American Civil War, Grover Cleveland is the only non-incumbent Democrat who has won the office of President of the United States under "ordinary" circumstances (meaning no third party, no Great Depression, no disputed count in Illinois, no assassination of the previous president, no Watergate).
From 1860 through 1912, 10 men were elected President of the United States -- Grover Cleveland being the only Democrat.
Woodrow Wilson, who won in 1912, only won because William Howard Taft (the Republican incumbent) split the party vote with former President Theodore Roosevelt who ran as the Progressive Party candidate. Wilson only garnered 41.6% of the popular vote, compared to a combined 50.6% of Roosevelt and Taft.
Following Wilson, there were three more Republicans. It took a major economic depression to get another Democrat elected (in 1932).
John F. Kennedy (the next Democratic non-incumbent to win the White House) won the United States presidential election, 1960 as the result of voter fraud in Chicago (and several other locations), with a mere 0.2% difference in the popular vote.
It took the aftermath of the Watergate matter to get the next, non-incumbent Democrat elected in 1976 in a very close election in which Democrat Jimmy Carter received 50.1% of the popular vote to Gerald Ford's 48.0%. 5,000 popular votes in the State of Ohio would have made the difference.
The next non-incumbent Democrat victory occurred in 1992, in which third party candidate H. Ross Perot took away 19% of the popular vote from the Republican candidate, incumbent George H.W. Bush. And even though Bill Clinton was twice elected, he never once had a majority of the vote (43.0% in 1992; 49.2% in 1996). More people (the majority of voters) voted against Clinton for President than ever voted for him.
Since the birth of the Republican Party, the average Republican margin of victory over their opponents in Presidential elections has been around 12% to the Democrat's margin of victory over their opponents at around 8%. Also since the birth of the Republican Party, Democrats only garnered a majority of the vote a total of 7 times in 38 elections, while Republicans earned a majority 17 times in those same 38 elections.
In the 20th century, only 7 U.S. Presidents gained a larger margin of victory over their opponents in their second election. Five of those seven were Republicans. It must be noted that this statistic cannot be applied to incumbents who entered office without being elected, as their re-election was actually their first election -- i.e. Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford)
- Nixon from a 0.7% margin of victory in 1968 to a 23.2% MOV in 1972.
- Reagan from a 9.7% MOV in 1980 to a 18.2% MOV in 1984.
- FDR from a 17.% MOV in 1932 to a 24.3% MOV in 1936.
- Eisenhower from a 10.7% MOV in 1952 to a 15.4% MOV in 1956.
- McKinley from a 4.2% MOV in 1896 to a 6.1% MOV in 1900.
- Clinton from a 5.6% MOV in 1992 to a 8.5% MOV in 1996.
- GWB from a -0.5% MOV in 2000 to a 2.8% MOV in 2004.
Of the 11 U.S. presidents to be re-elected (i.e. elected a second time) since the Civil War, 7 were Republicans and only 4 Democrats. All seven of those Republicans were re-elected with a higher percentage of the vote , while only 3 of those Democrats received a greater percentage for their re-election bid. And this doesn't even include Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third and fourth terms, where victory margins diminished in his third and forth terms.)
Contemporary Party
The contemporary Republican Party represents a wide array of interests such as the conservative evangelicals and the economic libertarians. The party has had some internal conflict over attitudes about how governments should run and how large they should be, what the party stands for, and what the party's attitude towards neo-conservatism should be especially in regard to foreign policy. The party is also divided over immigration issues with some members (such as George W. Bush) favoring workers visas and permits and some other members favoring strict control of immigration and strong action against illegal immigration. Unlike the Democratic party, the Republican party routinely allows dissenting factions such as the Log Cabin Republicans to speak at National Conventions.
Presidents from the party
- Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
- Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
- Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
- James Garfield (1881)
- Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885)
- Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
- William McKinley (1897-1901)
- Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
- William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
- Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
- Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
- Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
- Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961)
- Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
- Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
- Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
- George H. W. Bush (1989-1993)
- George W. Bush (2001-2009)
Criticism
The Republican Party have been frequently accused of vindictive and callous political positions. For instance, their attitudes to criminal justice are usually rather harsher than those espoused by the Democrats. Also, they have been accused of starting wars purely for political incentives, and frequently worsening situations.[Citation Needed] For these reasons and others, it is difficult for a Christian to justify voting Republican, though the same is also true for the Democrats.
See Also
- RINO - Republicans in Name Only
- Articles about Republicans from previous "Breaking News"
References
External Links
- Official GOP Site
- New York Young Republican Record
- The RSC’s Action Plan for House Republicans, Republican Study Committee, May 20, 2008
- A Detailed Action Plan For House Republicans: Bold, Simple, and Different than the Democrats, Republican Study Committee, May 20, 2008
- What Liberals Say - Category: Republicans, Accuracy In Media
