Republican Party. I INTRODUCTION Republican Party, one of the two major United States political parties, founded by a coalition in 1854. The coalition was composed of former members of the Whig, FreeSoil, and Know-Nothing parties, along with Northern Democrats who were dissatisfied with their party's conciliatory attitude on the slavery issue (see Free-Soil Party; Know-Nothings; Whig Party). The early Republicans were united in their opposition to extending slavery into the Western territories. In 1856 they nominated John Charles Frémont for the presidency. He won about a third of the popular vote, but alienated many potential supporters by his failure to oppose immigration. The Republicans joined the Democrats as one of the nation's two major parties in the late 1850s. They gained support as concern grew in the North over Southern influence in Washington, D.C., and they reassured the antiforeign Know-Nothings that they cared about the social impact of immigration. In 1860 their candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected to the presidency; the Southern states reacted by seceding from the Union, and the country was plunged into the Civil War (1861-1865). II CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION The Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed gave the Republican Party a solid core of strength and permanence. Republicans controlled most elective offices in the Northern states during the war, and for a generation afterward they were able to make full use of patriotic fervor to denounce the Democrats as traitors and friends of the South. This was an effective campaign tactic. "Waving the bloody shirt" against the South and the Democrats united all Republicans behind their memories of the great crusade to save the Union. The Democratic Party remained strong, however, and the Republicans were also troubled by internal dissension. In the early 1860s moderate and radical Republicans quarreled bitterly over their war aims, even as they fought together against their common Democratic enemy. Radicals wanted to use the war to end slavery and, to some degree, to reshape the society and power structure of the South. The moderates agreed on the abolition of slavery but rejected the idea of imposing racial equality or attempting to reshape the South's social and economic structure. President Lincoln skillfully played off one faction against another, and after his death the battle for control of the party continued until the radicals failed to oust President Andrew Johnson from office in 1868; the party then began to nominate increasingly moderate candidates. The Republicans did try to build support in the South by appealing to the long-established Whig groups there to join with newly enfranchised blacks. Republican leaders argued that Whigs and blacks had a common belief in the need for strong government action in society, but these arguments were ineffective in the face of racist campaigns by the Southern Democrats. Support for black rights waned when Republicans perceived that this support was costing the party needed votes, but even this did not help the party in the South, where the blacks were disfranchised and the whites for the most part remained Democratic. III THE PARTY'S CHANGING IDEOLOGY In the late 19th century new issues raised by the impact of the Industrial Revolution began to influence the Republicans. From its beginnings the party represented a certain kind of America: nationalistic, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, and committed to a strong federal government. In the post-Civil War period the party came to represent many of the new industrial forces in society as well. Despite resistance from some Republican leaders, the party's policy stances increasingly emphasized the promotion of industrial values, and Republican actions in office aided the emerging, highly centralized industrial economy. At the same time, Republicans were often openly hostile to the new waves of eastern European and Irish groups that were transforming the nation's cities. Republican state platforms frequently advocated government intervention to prohibit or limit liquor consumption and to shape school curricula in order to promote certain Protestant and American values against the threats posed by the newcomers, who became closely allied with the Democratic Party. Factionalism continued to divide the party. Prohibitionists and those who wished to exclude foreigners, for example, demanded heavy emphasis on their particular concerns and were not always enthusiastic about the party's other commitments. At the same time, another group, the Liberal Republicans, disgusted by corruption in the Republican administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, fought against the party's unwillingness to do anything about it. The party bosses, needing money to run expensive election campaigns and not particularly scrupulous about its source, resisted the reformers. These factions bedeviled the party because national elections remained close until the mid-1890s. The Republicans won five of seven presidential elections between 1868 and 1892, but had popular majorities in only three of them. The Republican ability to draw on rural, small-town, and Western voters, who still remembered the Civil War, was effectively counterbalanced by the Democrats' solid core vote in the South and among urban immigrants. As a result, a small prohibitionist vote or defections to economic reform parties could cost the Republicans dearly in a key state or two. The defection of the mugwumps, a reform faction that refused to back James G. Blaine, the party's presidential candidate in 1884, helped the Democrats win the presidency for the first time in many years. IV THE PROGRESSIVE ERA During the 1890s both major parties were hurt by the rise of agrarian protest, but infighting proved most divisive among the Democrats; their collapse at the polls followed in 1896. Beginning in that year, increased voter strength made the Republicans the majority party in the country for a generation. Party factionalism continued. Beginning in the 1890s a group of Republicans known as the progressives sought to balance the party's commitment to the industrial elite with the use of federal power to correct some of the worst excesses of the monopolies and trusts that dominated the economy. The former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, who had promoted some progressive measures while in office from 1901 to 1909, later became the presidential candidate of the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party; as a splinter group it aided in the defeat of the Republican presidential candidate William Howard Taft in 1912. The Democrats continued to control the presidency until 1920, when the voters, seeking a return to normalcy after World War I, brought the Republicans back to power under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. The Republican Party remained dominant throughout the 1920s, its strength unaffected even by another progressive defection in 1924. Despite opposition from agricultural and progressive Republicans, the party continued to foster industrial economic values in a time of extraordinary prosperity. Herbert Hoover, first as secretary of commerce, then as president from 1929 to 1933, symbolized Republican commitment to unbounded national prosperity rooted in massive industrial expansion. V THE NEW DEAL ERA The Great Depression, which began during Hoover's administration, destroyed America's belief in that dream of unlimited prosperity and its faith in the Republican Party. The disastrous economic collapse and extraordinarily high unemployment that followed made a mockery of Republican claims. The slow and limited response of the Hoover administration was ineffective and seemed to indicate too much indifference to the people's suffering. The Democrats made full use of the depression as an issue, capturing the presidency by a large margin in 1932 and winning the election of 1936 by one of the greatest landslides in history. The New Deal coalition, headed first by Franklin D. Roosevelt and later by Harry S. Truman, remained in power for a generation, the Republicans losing five presidential elections in a row. So great was the reaction to the depression that the Republican Party controlled Congress for only 4 of the 48 years between 1932 and 1980. The Republicans did win the presidency four times during that period--in 1952, 1956, 1968, and 1972--when the Democratic Party split or when some unusual combination of circumstances occurred. From the 1930s through the 1970s, however, the Democratic Party was the dominant party in the United States. The response of the Republicans to this new situation was confusion, anger, and much infighting as they sought a way to rebuild their national following. They vigorously condemned the New Deal policy of deficit spending and argued against government intervention on behalf of poorer elements in the society. In foreign affairs the party as a whole did not usually differ markedly from the Democrats, although Republicans generally tended more toward isolationism before World War II (1939-1945) and were apt, at least in their rhetoric, to take a stricter anti-Communist line during the Cold War period. From the late 1930s on, Republican factionalism exploded again between liberals or moderates--mainly in the East--who were willing to accept many of the New Deal reforms, and conservatives, who saw nothing good about them. VI THE POST-WORLD WAR II PERIOD Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the moderates dominated the party on the national level. Republican moderate Wendell Willkie was defeated in 1940, as was Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and 1948, but Dwight D. Eisenhower, also a moderate candidate, won the presidency in 1952 and again in 1956. Seeking a way to break the power of economic issues with their disastrous effect on party fortunes, Republicans returned to the social issues of an earlier day, although with modern overtones. Party leaders again argued that they represented a particular kind of American society: traditional, small town, and family oriented. This ideal played a part in the popularity of Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy's crusade against Communist subversion in the early 1950s and in conservative Republican attacks on Eastern establishment (meaning cosmopolitan and urban) values in the same decade. In the 1960s this approach became dominant: More and more the party represented itself as the movement of a better America--more homogeneous, simpler, happier, and unspoiled by the ruinous policies of the New Deal Democrats. VII THE TRIUMPH OF CONSERVATISM The nomination of Senator Barry M. Goldwater in 1964 brought conservative Republicanism to a dominant place in party councils for the first time since the 1930s. The conservatives thereafter controlled the party machinery and increasingly impressed their stamp on the party's principles and actions. They worked hard to win recruits in places where they had long been without influence, especially in the South and among urban, ethnic working-class groups. Although Goldwater's landslide defeat temporarily put to rest the belief that a conservative, anti-New Deal Republican majority existed in the country, waiting to be activated, conservative efforts began to have more of an effect later in the decade. The backlash against the movement for racial equality and the New Left agitation of the 1960s and 1970s drew some groups toward the party; by 1972 Republicans were successfully accusing Senator George S. McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, of a permissive attitude toward drug use, indifference to patriotic needs, and a willingness to use the power of government on behalf of controversial social policies. As these themes developed, moderate Republicans were increasingly isolated within the party. Some prominent moderates abandoned Republicanism, leaving behind only the conservative core to influence the party's stance and outlook. Although an occasional moderate nominee still appeared, moderates seemed to make up less and less of the party. The administration of Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1974 started out as a strong reaction against the radicalism that swept U.S. college campuses in the late 1960s. After 1972, however, the administration became identified with the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon's resignation under threat of impeachment. The administration of Gerald R. Ford was unable to restore the nation's confidence. A Democratic resurgence followed with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, but the conservative tide returned when the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan won an overwhelming victory over Carter in 1980. VIII THE REAGAN ERA As president, Reagan, backed by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress, embarked on a program to increase military strength and curtail many of the social welfare programs of previous Democratic administrations. Reagan won a landslide reelection victory in 1984. In the midterm elections of 1986, however, which turned mostly on local and regional issues, the Democrats took control of Congress for the first time since Reagan took office, with a net gain of eight seats in the Senate (55-45) and five seats in the House (258-177). The Republicans gained 8 governorships--24 to the Democrats' 26. In 1988 the strength of the Republican Party helped presidential nominee George Bush overcome the effects of the scandal known as the Iran-Contra affair, as well as the traditional handicaps faced by an incumbent vice president running for higher office. Republican losses in other races from 1988 through 1990, however, left the Democrats with increased majorities in the Senate, the House, and state governorships. IX CONTRACT WITH AMERICA In August 1992 the Republican National Convention illustrated the dominance of the conservative wing of the party by focusing on topics such as traditional family values; the convention alienated many moderate supporters. The loss of the White House in 1992 to Democrat Bill Clinton marked the end of the Reagan-Bush era. However, in the midterm elections of 1994 the Republicans gained a majority in Congress for the first time in more than 40 years. The Republican candidates for the House of Representatives campaigned on a platform called the "Contract with America," which consisted of a ten-point agenda that included a pledge to pass a balanced-budget amendment, to reform welfare, and to impose term limits. The contract was drafted by Representative Newt Gingrich, who became the Speaker of the House after the 1994 elections. Republicans in both the House and the Senate encountered problems passing parts of their agenda. President Bill Clinton vetoed two welfare reform bills before finally signing a third one in August 1996. He also opposed proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and educational and environmental programs. Even within the Republican Party, the members of the House and the Senate could not always agree. The House passed the balanced-budget amendment, but the Senate defeated it. However, there were some parts of the Republican contract that were successfully passed, such as an antiterrorism bill. As the 1996 presidential election campaign began, Robert Dole, the Senate majority leader, emerged as the likely Republican nomination. Dole resigned his Senate seat in June 1996 in order to devote his full attentions to the campaign. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi took over as Senate majority leader. During the campaign, Dole focused on a 15-percent tax cut, his service to the country through his war record, and long service in government. However, Clinton defeated Dole in November 1996. Clinton received 49.2 percent of the popular vote compared with Dole's 40.8 percent. The Republican Party, however, was able to maintain its majority in both houses of Congress. In the spring of 1997 Congress and Clinton reached an agreement to balance the federal budget in five years by cutting projected spending by $263 billion, with many of the cuts to come from Medicare and Medicaid. The government actually eliminated the deficit in one year, and in 1998 the budget showed a surplus for the first time since 1969. The Republicans and Democrats then began to debate what to do with the projected surpluses. The Republicans insisted upon major tax cuts, while Clinton and the Democrats wanted to use the money to shore up Social Security and to increase spending on education. During the 1998 general election, the Republican Party seemed likely to increase its majorities in Congress because of scandals in the Clinton White House--particularly the president's affair with a White House intern and his efforts to conceal it. Republicans made the scandal and the president's imminent impeachment a central issue in the congressional campaigns. But party leaders miscalculated the voters' fatigue with the scandal and their opposition to impeaching and removing a president who most people thought was doing a good job. In the election, the Democrats gained five seats in the House, the first time since 1934 that a president's party picked up seats in an off-year election. The election left the Republicans with only a 223-211 lead over the Democrats in the House. While the party kept its 55-45 majority in the Senate, senators who had been major critics of Clinton in the investigations were defeated. Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, and his chosen successor, Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana, resigned their seats in the aftermath of the election, leaving the party's leadership severely weakened. After the election, Republicans in the House of Representatives pressed ahead with the impeachment process. In December the House voted along party lines to impeach the president for perjury and obstruction of justice. In February 1999 the Senate voted to acquit Clinton of the charges, although most Republicans voted to convict and remove the president from office. The Republican Party emerged from the ordeal badly damaged rather than strengthened, and it began to search for ways to repair its standing with voters. X DISPUTED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2000 In the 2000 presidential race, the Republican Party nominated Texas governor George W. Bush, the son of former president George Bush, as the party's presidential candidate. During the campaign, Bush focused on issues such as military spending, education, and tax cuts. He ran against Al Gore, the Democratic nominee for president. After one of the closest and most disputed elections in U.S. history, Bush won the election. However, the Republicans lost seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republicans maintained a slight majority in the House, but the Senate was split evenly between the Republican and Democratic parties. The even split in the Senate ended in mid-2001 when Republican senator James Jeffords left his party and became an independent. His switch gave the Democrats control of the Senate. President Bush enjoyed high approval ratings as his term began, and those ratings went up dramatically after the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States that killed about 3,000 people. The September 11 attacks deeply affected the country, and many people rallied behind Bush's efforts to fight terrorism. At the same time Bush struggled to deal with the faltering U.S. economy, which had started to decline in 2000 and was further impacted by the terrorist attacks. In the 2002 midterm elections, Bush campaigned for many Republican candidates. His efforts and his popularity helped the party regain control of the U.S. Senate and increase its majority in the House of Representatives. XI BUSH REELECTION Bush was reelected in the 2004 presidential contest against Democrat John F. Kerry, and the Republican Party widened its majority in both the House and Senate. Although Bush's approval ratings fell below 50 percent prior to the election, a high turnout among voters who cited "moral values" as their most important concern apparently was a significant factor in the Republican victories. According to polls conducted for the Associated Press and the major television networks, 22 percent of voters cited "moral values" as the issue that mattered most in deciding how they voted for president, followed by the economy, 20 percent; terrorism, 19 percent; and the Iraq war, 15 percent. Many political observers credited Karl Rove, Bush's chief campaign adviser, with a winning strategy that focused on organizing a high voter turnout among evangelical Christians. Eleven state ballot initiatives organized by the Republican Party in largely undecided states, which called for bans on gay marriages, were believed to have brought millions of conservative and evangelical voters to the polls. However, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that when voters were asked open-ended questions about the most important issue, 27 percent chose the Iraq war; 14 percent, the economy; and moral values tied with terrorism at 9 percent. XII THE 2006 MIDTERM ELECTIONS The Democrats regained control of the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. Democrats also took six state houses from the Republicans, giving them control of 28 governorships, including outright control of both the state house and the state legislature in 15 states. The Republicans lost key Senate races in Montana and Virginia, albeit by slim margins. But perhaps more disconcerting were the defeats of moderate Republicans in Senate races in Ohio and Rhode Island. Democratic gains in the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado and Montana, and other gains in the West threatened to make the Republican Party an increasingly regional party based in the South. Democrats, however, eked out gains even there and according to some polls, made inroads among evangelical Christians. Most political observers agreed that the Iraq war and corruption scandals badly damaged the Republicans in the midterm elections. Polls showed that the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Bush administration's handling of the war there had become increasingly unpopular. Corruption scandals involving favors from lobbyists and kickbacks from defense contracts led to prison sentences for several Republican members of Congress. Just weeks before the election, Republican congressman Mark Foley resigned after it was disclosed that he had sent sexually suggestive Internet messages to male congressional pages. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
