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Republican Party (United States)

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Revision as of 17:56, 26 January 2025 by PuzzledFox99 (talk | contribs) (More history)
Republican Party

AbbreviationGOP
ChairpersonRonna McDaniel
FoundedMarch 20, 1854
Membership (2021)35,732,180
Political orientationNeoconservatism
Neoliberalism
Paleoconservatism
Factions:
Neo-fascism
Trumpism
Libertarianism
Political positionRight-wing to far-right
Website
www.gop.com

The Republican Party, nicknamed the "Grand Old Party" (GOP) is a far-right political party in the United States. It is one of the two ruling parties in the government of the United States of America, the other being the Democratic Party. Together they are both halves of the United States Corporate duopoly.

History

Founding and early years (1854–1865)

The Republican Party was founded on March 20, 1854 as a coalition of the industrial bourgeoisie in the north-eastern states, advocating for an end to the political power of the slave owning oligarchy in the south. The victory of the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in the 1860 election would lead to the secession of the slave-holding states and the beginning of the Statesian Civil War, lasting from 1861 to 1865, ending in a victory for the Union and the elimination of chattel slavery in the US.[1]

Post-Civil War to Civil Rights (1865–1964)

"Southern Strategy" and shift further right (1964–2000)

While the Republican Party was always a bourgeois party, and thus always somewhat reactionary following the Civil War's end, it began taking its current openly far-right form in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s under Richard Nixon, who adopted the so-called "Southern strategy." The purpose of the "Southern strategy" was to win votes for the Republicans in the Southern states by using racist dog-whistles. This strategy was recognized by Republican strategists Kevin Phillips in 1970[2] and Lee Atwater in 1981.[3]

In a volume published in 1975, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia said that the Republican Party "took a realistic approach to Soviet-American relations, making it possible to implement several measures to improve relations between the USA and the USSR."Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag Domestically, Reagan allied with right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who became a major force in US politics thanks to him.[4]

Twenty-first century (2000–present)

In power

The Republican Party was in power from 1861 to 1885 (Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur), from 1889 to 1893 (President Benjamin Harrison), from 1897 to 1913 (Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft), from 1921 to 1933 (Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover), from 1953 to 1961 (President Dwight D. Eisenhower), and from 1969 to 1977 (Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford).[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 V. V. Shimanovskii (1975). Great Soviet Encyclopedia (3rd ed.), vol. 22: 'Republican Party' (Russian: Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija). [PDF] Moscow.
  2. ↑
    ““All the talk about Republicans making inroads into the Negro vote is persiflage. Even ‘Jake the Snake’ [Senator Jacob K. Javits] only gets 20 per cent. From now on, the Re publicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 per cent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that . . . but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and be come Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.””

    James Boyd (1970-05-17). "Nixon's Southern strategy: 'It's All in the Charts'" The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2019-12-18.
  3. ↑
    “Here's how I would approach that issue as a statistician or a political scientist. Or as a psychologist, which I'm not, is how abstract you handle the race thing. Now once you start out, and now you don't quote me on this, you start out in 1954 by saying "nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger," that hurts you, backfires, so you say stuff like "forced bussing, states rights" and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now you're talking about cutting taxes and all these things. What you're talking about are totally economic things, and the byproduct often is Blacks get hurt worse than whites.
    And subconsciously maybe that is part of it, I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, that we're doing away with the racial problem one way or the other.
    Do you follow me?
    Because obviously sitting around saying, "we want to cut taxes, we want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the bussing thing, and a hell of lot more abstract than, "nigger, nigger."
    So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.”

    Bradford DeLong (2017-03-17). "Lee Atwater (1981): Interview with Alexander P. Lamis: Rough Transcript: Weekend Reading" bradford-delong.com.

    See also: Rick Perlstein (2012-11-13). "Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy" The Nation.

  4. ↑ Steven P. Miller (2014-05-18). "The evangelical presidency: Reagan's dangerous love affair with the Christian right" Salon.