Republican Party

Republican Party

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Republican Party is one of the two major parties in American politics and government. Like the Democratic Party, the Republican Party’s organization reflects federalism and the separation of powers. Each state has a Republican state committee and most American cities, towns, and counties also have Republican committees. Usually, Republican voters choose members, officers, and chairs of these state and local committees. Through primaries and caucuses, they also choose delegates to represent them at Republican national conventions.

Republicans in the states and territories also choose members of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In addition to representing their states and territories in the RNC, RNC members also elect RNC officials, such as chairs and treasurers, choose the city that will host the next Republican national convention, and determine party rules and procedures, relating to such matters as the apportionment and selection of delegates from the states and territories and platform-making processes. At Republican national conventions, held during the summers of presidential election years, the major responsibilities of Republican delegates are to ratify or reject national platforms and to nominate presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Besides federalism, the separation of powers also divides and distributes the Republican Party’s organization, authority, and functions. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) respectively serve the campaign needs of Republican candidates who run for election or reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Like the RNC, the NRCC and NRSC receive and distribute campaign funds and provide research, information, and literature on Republican policy positions, media and mailing services, and coordination among Republican candidates. The campaign finance role of the RNC, NRCC, and NRSC has diminished as Republican presidential and congressional candidates have become more dependent on individuals, state and local party committees, and interest groups, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Christian Coalition, for campaign spending and the delivery of campaign services, such as advertising, direct mail, and voter mobilization.

The Republican Party was established in 1854. Most of its founders were disaffected Democrats and former Whigs. The Republican Party’s major, initial policy position was its opposition to the extension of slavery into new states and territories. It adopted this policy position from the Free Soil Party, which it soon absorbed. Like the Whig and Federalist parties that preceded it in the two-party system, the Republican Party supported high, protective tariffs, a national bank, federal supremacy over the states, and a flexible interpretation of the federal government’s powers in the Constitution. With the Democratic Party divided over the slavery issue, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president in 1860.

During the period of closely contested presidential elections from 1876 until 1896, Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist, popularized the use of the elephant as the unofficial symbol of the Republican Party, which was also nicknamed the “Grand Old Party,” or the GOP, because of the party’s close association with the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union army veterans of the Civil War. In 1896 the Democratic Party nominated William Jennings Bryan for president. Bryan was a Nebraska congressman affiliated with both the Democratic and Populist parties. His rousing campaign speeches zealously denounced the GOP’s positions on high tariffs and the gold standard for enriching big business and impoverishing farmers and laborers.

Orchestrated by Marcus Hanna, an Ohio businessman, the Republican presidential campaign portrayed Bryan as a dangerous economic radical and rural demagogue with an anti-urban, anti-immigrant bias and contended that high tariffs and the gold standard promoted a broad, national prosperity. The Republican landslide in the 1896 national elections established a long-term Republican realignment of voters that enabled the GOP to usually control the presidency and Congress from 1896 until 1932. Growing intra-party conflicts between the Old Guard, i.e., the conservative wing, and the Progressives, i.e., the GOP’s liberal wing, helped Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, to win the 1912 and 1916 presidential elections.

The Great Depression that began in 1929 during the Republican presidency of Herbert Hoover discredited the Republican Party’s reputation among many Americans for competent economic leadership and ended their association with national prosperity. Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attractive leadership style and the popularity of New Deal economic policies broadened and diversified the coalition of the Democratic Party, thereby transforming it into the new majority party among voters. In particular, African Americans, who recently were the most loyal Republican voters, became the most loyal Democratic voters during the 1930s because of Roosevelt and the New Deal, despite the continuing association of the Democratic Party with Southern whites and segregation.

The Democratic realignment of the 1930s helped the Democratic Party to dominate American politics and government until the election of Republican president Richard M. Nixon in 1968. During those years, Republicans disagreed about how to defeat Democrats in elections and what ideological and policy alternatives they should offer American voters. Moderate and liberal Republicans, such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961), accepted most of the New Deal’s policy legacy and an internationalistic, bipartisan foreign policy in the cold war. These Republicans emphasized that the GOP could manage liberal Democratic policies with greater efficiency and fiscal responsibility and could achieve civil rights for African Americans more sincerely and effectively than the Democratic Party, with its powerful anti-civil rights Southern wing in Congress. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans, such as Senators Robert A. Taft of Ohio and Barry Goldwater of Arizona, criticized the moderate-liberal wing of the GOP for “me too-ism” and argued that the GOP would perform better in federal elections if it offered voters a distinctly conservative ideological and policy alternative to liberal Democratic policies and candidates. This conservatism included an emphasis on less domestic spending, greater protection of states’ rights and property rights through opposition to new civil rights bills, and a more nationalistic, aggressive, and partisan American foreign policy in the Cold War. Nonetheless, except for the 1964 presidential election, moderate and liberal Republicans dominated the GOP’s presidential nominations and major platform planks at Republican national conventions from 1940 until 1980.

Despite the Democratic realignment of the 1930s, a substantial minority of African Americans remained Republicans because they perceived the Republican Party, with its “Lincoln legacy,” to be more sincere and effective on civil rights. To black Republicans, the noisy defection of some Southern Democrats to Strom Thurmond’s “Dixiecrat” presidential candidacy in 1948, because of their opposition to Truman’s doomed civil rights legislation, proved that the Democratic Party would also be sharply divided between its Northern and Southern wings on civil rights. In the 1964 presidential election, however, Barry Goldwater, one of the few Republican senators to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, received most of the Southern white vote and only around 6 percent of the black vote. As the presence and influence of conservative Southern whites steadily increased within the Republican Party, fewer white Republican politicians supported liberal policies on race, such as affirmative action, court-ordered busing, and antipoverty programs.

During the 1970s, conservative Republicans, such as Ronald W. Reagan, often disagreed with the moderate policies of Republican presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, especially regarding détente with the Soviet Union and China. After nearly defeating Ford for the GOP’s 1976 presidential nomination, Reagan was nominated and elected president in 1980. Reagan’s policy goals prioritized the conservative agenda of major tax cuts, defense spending increases, reduced federal regulation of the economy, less domestic spending, a return of more domestic policy responsibilities to the states, and a more aggressive foreign policy. Aided by Republican control of the Senate from 1981 to 1987, Reagan increased the number of conservative federal judges, especially those with conservative judicial positions on abortion, crime control, school prayer, and other social issues. The conservative domination of the GOP by the end of Reagan’s presidency (1981-1989) was also a consequence of the growing political influence of the religious right, especially in the South.

Although William J. Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, won the 1992 presidential election against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush, the Republicans won control of both houses of Congress in 1994. For the first time since the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), most members of Congress from the South were Republicans. When Republicans in Congress impeached Clinton and tried unsuccessfully to convict him during 1998 and 1999, polls indicated that many Americans perceived the Republican leadership of Congress, especially Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, to be harsh, extreme, and unreasonable in its relationship with the president.

Realizing the need for the GOP to express a more inclusive and less divisive type of conservatism, George W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee in 2000, promised an ideology and domestic policy agenda based on “compassionate conservatism” during his successful presidential campaign. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” included cultivation of minority voters, especially Latinos, and his proposal to use “faith-based initiatives” to provide some federally funded social services. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush’s perspectives, actions, and objectives in foreign and defense policy were influenced by neoconservative positions. Neoconservatism advocates and justifies the use of American military force, including preemptive attacks and invasions, to protect the security of the United States and its allies, especially Israel, and to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Neoconservatives are willing to engage in these actions, including “nation-building” efforts in American-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, without the support and participation of most U.S. allies.

After Bush was reelected in 2004 with 44 percent of the Latino vote and a victory margin of over three million popular votes, Karl Rove, Bush’s top political strategist, hoped that Bush’s presidency would stimulate a Republican realignment of voters similar to that of 1896. As Bush’s second term progressed, however, the president experienced low public approval ratings, and more Republicans in Congress openly disagreed with each other and Bush over the Iraq war, deficit spending, and immigration. The Democrats won control of Congress in the 2006 elections with net gains of twenty-nine House seats and six Senate seats. Polls and media analyses indicated that voters were reacting against lobbying scandals, the Iraq war, inadequate health care, and Republican control of both the presidency and Congress.

SEE ALSO Bush, George H. W.; Bush, George W.; Left and Right; Multiparty Systems; Nixon, Richard M.; Political Parties; Reagan, Ronald; Republic

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Phillips, Kevin P. 1969. The Emerging Republican Majority. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.

Rae, Nicol C. 1989. The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sean J. Savage