Republican Party

The birth of the Republican Party through Reconstruction

The term Republican was adopted in 1792 by supporters of Thomas Jefferson, who favored a decentralized government with limited powers. Although Jefferson’s political philosophy is consistent with the outlook of the modern Republican Party, his faction, which soon became known as the Democratic-Republican Party, ironically had evolved by the 1830s into the Democratic Party, the modern Republican Party’s chief rival.

The Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when antislavery leaders (including former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties) joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act. At meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July 1854), they recommended forming a new party, which was duly established at the political convention in Jackson.

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At their first presidential nominating convention, in 1856, the Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform that called on Congress to abolish slavery in the territories, reflecting a widely held view in the North. Although ultimately unsuccessful in his presidential bid, Frémont carried 11 Northern states and received nearly two-fifths of the electoral vote. During the first four years of its existence, the party rapidly displaced the Whigs as the main opposition to the dominant Democratic Party. In 1860 the Democrats split over the slavery issue, as the Northern and Southern wings of the party nominated different candidates (Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, respectively); the election that year also included John Bell, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party. Thus, the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was able to capture the presidency, winning 18 Northern states and receiving 60 percent of the electoral vote but only 40 percent of the popular vote. By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration as president, however, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and the country soon descended into the American Civil War (1861–65).

In 1863 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in rebelling states to be “forever free” and welcomed them to join the Union’s armed forces. The abolition of slavery would, in 1865, be formally entrenched in the Constitution of the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Because the historical role played by Lincoln and the Republican Party in the abolition of slavery came to be regarded as their greatest legacy, the Republican Party is sometimes referred to as the party of Lincoln.

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The prolonged agony of the Civil War weakened Lincoln’s prospects for reelection in 1864. To broaden his support, he chose as his vice presidential candidate Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union Democratic senator from Tennessee, and the Lincoln-Johnson ticket subsequently won a landslide victory over Democrat George B. McClellan and his running mate George Pendleton. Following Lincoln’s assassination at the end of the war, Johnson favored Lincoln’s moderate program for the Reconstruction of the South over the more punitive plan backed by the Radical Republican members of Congress. Stymied for a time by Johnson’s vetoes, the Radical Republicans won overwhelming control of Congress in the 1866 elections and engineered Johnson’s impeachment in the House of Representatives. Although the Senate fell one vote short of convicting and removing Johnson, the Radical Republicans managed to implement their Reconstruction program, which made the party anathema across the former Confederacy. In the North the party’s close identification with the Union victory secured it the allegiance of most farmers, and its support of protective tariffs and of the interests of big business eventually gained it the backing of powerful industrial and financial circles.

The rise of Progressivism to the Great Depression

The 1860 election is today regarded by most political observers as the first of three “critical” elections in the United States—contests that produced sharp and enduring changes in party loyalties across the country (although some analysts consider the election of 1824 to be the first critical election). After 1860 the Democratic and Republican parties became the major parties in a largely two-party system. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in rough balance—except in the South, which became solidly Democratic. The two parties controlled Congress for almost equal periods, though the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (1885–89 and 1893–97).

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In the country’s second critical election, in 1896, the Republicans won the presidency and control of both houses of Congress, and the Republican Party became the majority party in most states outside the South. The Republican presidential nominee that year was William McKinley, a conservative who favored high tariffs on foreign goods and “sound” money tied to the value of gold. The Democrats, already burdened by the economic depression that began under President Cleveland, nominated William Jennings Bryan, who advocated cheap money (money available at low interest rates) based on both gold and silver.

The assassination of President McKinley in 1901 elevated to the presidency Theodore Roosevelt, leader of the party’s progressive wing. Roosevelt opposed monopolistic and exploitative business practices, adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward labor, and urged the conservation of natural resources. He was reelected in 1904 but declined to run in 1908, deferring to his secretary of war and friend, William Howard Taft, who won handily. Subsequently disenchanted with Taft’s conservative policies, Roosevelt unsuccessfully challenged him for the Republican nomination in 1912. Roosevelt then bolted the Republican Party to form the Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party) and ran for president against Taft and the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. With the Republican vote divided, Wilson won the presidency, and he was reelected in 1916. During the spectacular prosperity of the 1920s, the Republicans’ conservative and probusiness policies proved more attractive to voters than Wilson’s brand of idealism and internationalism. The Republicans easily won the presidential elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed had severe consequences for the Republicans, largely because of their unwillingness to combat the effects of the depression through direct government intervention in the economy. In the election of 1932, considered the country’s third critical election, Republican incumbent Pres. Herbert Hoover was overwhelmingly defeated by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Republicans were relegated to the status of a minority party. Roosevelt’s three reelections (he was the only president to serve more than two terms), the succession of Harry S. Truman to the presidency on Roosevelt’s death in 1945, and Truman’s narrow election over New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 kept the Republicans out of the White House for two decades. Although most Republicans in the 1930s vehemently opposed Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs, by the 1950s the party had largely accepted the federal government’s expanded role and regulatory powers.

McCarthyism and Watergate

In 1952 the Republican Party nominated as its presidential candidate World War II Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, who easily defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson in the general election. Despite Eisenhower’s centrist views, the Republican platform was essentially conservative, calling for a strong anticommunist stance in foreign affairs, reductions in government regulation of the economy, lower taxes for the wealthy, and resistance to federal civil rights legislation. Nevertheless, Eisenhower did dispatch federal troops to Arkansas in 1957 to enforce the court-ordered racial integration of a high school in Little Rock; he also signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. Moreover, his “moderate Republicanism” led him to oversee an expansion of social security, an increase in the minimum wage, and the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

In the early 1950s Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin became the party’s most ardent anticommunist, taking the limelight while attempting to expose communists who he claimed were in the American government. In the interest of party unity, Eisenhower chose not to criticize McCarthy’s demagogic red-baiting and occasionally appeared to support him; privately, however, the president did not hide his enmity for McCarthy, worked to discredit him, and pushed Republican senators to censure him.

The party retained the traditional support of both big and small business and gained new support from growing numbers of middle-class suburbanites and—perhaps most significantly—white Southerners, who were upset by the prointegration policies of leading Democrats, including President Truman, who had ordered the integration of the military. Eisenhower was reelected in 1956, but in 1960 Richard M. Nixon, Eisenhower’s vice president, lost narrowly to Democrat John F. Kennedy.

The Republicans were in severe turmoil at their 1964 convention, where moderates and conservatives battled for control of the party. Ultimately, the conservatives secured the nomination of Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, who lost by a landslide to Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s vice president and successor. By 1968 the party’s moderate faction had regained control and it again nominated Nixon, who narrowly won the popular vote over Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president. Many Southern Democrats abandoned the Democratic Party to vote for the anti-integration candidate George C. Wallace. Importantly, the 1964 and 1968 elections signaled the death of the Democratic “Solid South,” as both Goldwater and Nixon made significant inroads there. In 1964, 5 of the 6 states won by Goldwater were in the South; in 1968, 11 Southern states voted for Nixon and only 1 voted for Humphrey.

Although Nixon was reelected by a landslide in 1972, Republicans made few gains in congressional, state, and local elections and failed to win control of Congress. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974 and was succeeded in office by Gerald R. Ford, the first appointed vice president to become president. Ford lost narrowly to Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976. In 1980 Ronald W. Reagan, the charismatic leader of the Republican Party’s conservative wing, defeated Carter and helped the Republicans to regain control of the Senate, which they held until 1987.

Reagan, the end of the Cold War, and the rise of the Tea Party

Reagan introduced deep tax cuts and launched a massive buildup of U.S. military forces. His personal popularity and an economic recovery contributed to his 49-state victory over Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984. His vice president, George H.W. Bush, continued the Republicans’ presidential success by handily defeating Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988. During Bush’s term, the Cold War came to an end after communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. In 1991 Bush led an international coalition that drove Iraqi armies out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War. Congress continued to be controlled by the Democrats, however, and Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992 to another Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton. Partly because of Clinton’s declining popularity in 1993–94, the Republicans won victories in the 1994 midterm elections that gave them control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1954. They promptly undertook efforts to overhaul the country’s welfare system and to reduce the budget deficit, but their uncompromising and confrontational style led many voters to blame them for a budget impasse in 1995–96 that resulted in two partial government shutdowns. Clinton was reelected in 1996, though the Republicans retained control of Congress.

In 2000 Texas Gov. George W. Bush, son of the former president, recaptured the presidency for the Republicans, receiving 500,000 fewer popular votes than Democrat Al Gore but narrowly winning a majority of the electoral vote (271–266) after the Supreme Court of the United States ordered a halt to the manual recounting of disputed ballots in Florida. Bush was only the second son of a president to assume the nation’s highest office. The Republicans also won a majority in both chambers of Congress (though the Democrats gained effective control of the Senate in 2001 following the decision of Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont to became an independent). A surge in Bush’s popularity following the September 11 attacks of 2001 enabled the Republicans to recapture the Senate and to make gains in the House of Representatives in 2002. In 2004 Bush was narrowly reelected, winning both the popular and electoral vote, and the Republicans kept control of both houses of Congress. In the 2006 midterm elections, however, the Republicans fared poorly, hindered largely by the growing opposition to the Iraq War, and the Democrats regained control of both the House and the Senate. In the general election of 2008 the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, was defeated by Democrat Barack Obama, and the Democrats increased their majority in both houses of Congress. The following year the Republican National Committee elected Michael Steele as its first African American chairman.

With a gain of some 60 seats, a swing not registered since 1948, Republicans recaptured control of the House and dramatically reduced the Democrats’ majority in the Senate in the 2010 midterm election. The election, which was widely seen as a referendum on the Obama administration’s policy agenda, was marked by anxiety over the struggling economy (especially the high unemployment rate) and by the upsurge of the Tea Party—a populist movement whose adherents generally opposed excessive taxation and “big” government. Tea Party candidates, some of whom had displaced candidates favored by the Republican establishment during the primaries, had mixed success in the general election.

In the 2012 general election, the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was unable to unseat Obama. The situation in Congress remained relatively unchanged, with Republicans retaining their hold on the House of Representatives and Democrats successfully defending their majority in the Senate. The Republicans regained control of the Senate during the 2014 midterm elections.

Trump and the MAGA revolution

The 2016 presidential election was a watershed moment for the Republican Party. The party’s nomination was captured by businessman and television personality Donald Trump, who easily defeated more-mainstream Republican candidates such as Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz in the primaries. Trump’s far-right social positions and outspoken hostility toward immigrants made a number of mainstream Republicans concerned that he was setting the party up for a Goldwater-esque landslide electoral defeat. But, to the surprise of most political pundits, he won the Electoral College despite amassing almost three million fewer popular votes than Democrat Hillary Clinton, giving Republicans the presidency for the first time in eight years to go alongside the party’s retention of power in both chambers of Congress. Trump continued to defy political norms after taking office, and his presidency was plagued by controversy, especially allegations that his campaign had colluded with Russia to secure his election. Although he enjoyed solid support among Republicans, some believed that he was causing irreparable harm to the party. His overall approval ratings were typically low, and in the 2018 midterms Democrats retook control of the House.

During Trump’s presidency, the party fractured between Republican traditionalists and the emerging pro-Trump MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. In September 2019 it was revealed that Trump had attempted to pressure Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky into launching an investigation into presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in exchange for the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally approved security assistance. The subsequent investigation of the Ukraine scandal led to Trump’s impeachment in the House in December 2019, although he was acquitted in the Senate the following month. As the COVID-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and brought the economy to a standstill in 2020, Trump drew criticism for downplaying the effects of the disease and for the scattershot federal response. After Biden was victorious in the 2020 presidential election, Trump refused to concede, instead promoting a web of baseless conspiracy theories about election interference.

On January 6, 2021, thousands of Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress, temporarily halting the certification of the election results and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power. A week later, Trump was impeached by the House for a second time—in this case, for his role in inspiring the attack on the Capitol. Unlike the first impeachment, in which voting broke down largely along party lines, several prominent Republicans—including Liz Cheney in the House and Susan Collins and Ben Sasse in the Senate—voted to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” Trump was ultimately acquitted in the Senate. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, it seemed that Trump’s political career was finished, but before long, current and prospective Republican office holders were journeying to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to seek his endorsement. Trump and the MAGA movement had survived January 6, but Republican candidates underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections. Although the Republicans won control of the House, it was by a narrow margin, and Democrats retained control of the Senate.