Third party system: 1854-1896

Establishment

The Republican Party was established in 1854 by a coalition of former Whigs, Northern Democrats, and Free-Soilers who opposed the expansion of slavery and held a vision for modernizing the United States.

The new party was created as an act of defiance against what activists denounced as the Slave Power—the powerful class of slaveholders who were conspiring to control the federal government and to spread slavery nationwide. The party founders adopted the name “Republican,” echoing the 1776 republican values of civic virtue and opposition to aristocracy and corruption. The new party emphasized a vision of modernizing higher education, banking, railroads, industry, and cities, while promising free homesteads to farmers.

The party initially had its base in the Northeast and Midwest, but in recent decades it has increasingly shifted to the inland West and the South. Since the party fielded its first presidential candidate, in 1856, 18 of the 29 United States Presidents have been Republicans, including current President George W. Bush.

John C. Frémont ran as the first Republican nominee for President, using the slogan: “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont.” Although Frémont lost, his party showed a strong base. It dominated in New England, New York, and the northern Midwest, and had a strong presence in the rest of the North. It had very little support in the South, where it was roundly denounced in 1856-1860 as a divisive force that threatened civil war.

The Civil War and an era of Republican dominance: 1860-1896
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 began a new era of Republican dominance based in the industrial Northeast and agricultural Midwest. Republicans still often refer to their party as the “party of Lincoln.” Lincoln proved brilliantly successful in uniting all the factions of his party to fight for the Union. However, he often disagreed with the Radical Republicans who demanded harsher measures toward the South. In Congress, the party passed major legislation to promote rapid modernization, including a national banking system, high tariffs, the first temporary income tax, many excise taxes, paper money issued without backing (”greenbacks”), a huge national debt, homestead laws, and land grants to aid higher education, railroads and agriculture.

The Republicans denounced the northern anti-war Democrats as disloyal Copperheads and won enough War Democrats to maintain their majority in 1862, and reelect Lincoln by a landslide in 1864. During Reconstruction, 1865-1877, how to deal with the ex-Confederates and the freed slaves or Freedmen were the major issues. President Andrew Johnson, never a Republican, broke with the Radicals in 1866. The showdown came in the Congressional elections of 1866, in which the Radicals won a sweeping victory and took full control of Reconstruction, passing key laws over Johnson’s vetoes. The Radicals imposed Republican rule on the South -a coalition of Freedmen, Scalawags, and Carpetbaggers, who were deeply resented by the conservative ex-Confederates.

Elected in 1868, Ulysses S. Grant supported radical reconstruction programs in the South, the Fourteenth Amendment, equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen; most of all, Grant was the hero of the war veterans, who marched to his tune. Reconstruction came to an end when the contested election of 1876 was awarded to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes who promised, through the unofficial Compromise of 1877, to withdraw federal troops from control of the last three Southern states. The region then became the Solid South, giving overwhelming majorities of its electoral votes and Congressional seats to the Democrats until 1964.

As the Northern post-war economy boomed with industry, railroads, mines, and fast-growing cities, as well as prosperous agriculture, the Republicans took credit and promoted policies to keep the fast growth going. The Democratic Party was largely controlled by pro-business Bourbon Democrats until 1896. The GOP supported big business generally, hard money (i.e., the gold standard), high tariffs, and generous pensions for Union veterans. By 1890, the Republicans had agreed to the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints from owners of small businesses and farmers. Civil service reform was a bipartisan program that eliminated most patronage by 1900. Foreign affairs seldom became partisan issues (except for the annexation of Hawaii, which Republicans favored and Democrats opposed). Much more salient were cultural issues. The GOP supported the pietistic Protestants (especially the Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Scandinavian Lutherans) who demanded Prohibition. That angered wet Republicans, especially German Americans, who broke ranks in 1890-1892, handing power to the Democrats.

From 1860 to 1912, the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavern keepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. “Romanism” meant Roman Catholicism, especially the Irish, who staffed the Democratic Party in the large cities, and whom the Republicans denounced for political corruption. “Rebellion” stood for the Confederates who tried to break the Union in 1861, and the Copperheads in the North who sympathized with them.

Demographic trends aided the Democrats, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were mostly Democrats, and outnumbered the British and Scandinavian Republicans. During the 1880s, elections were remarkably close. The Democrats usually lost, but won in 1884 and 1892). In the 1894 Congressional elections, the GOP scored the biggest landslide in its history, as Democrats were blamed for the severe economic depression 1893-1897 and the violent coal and railroad strikes of 1894.

Fourth party system: 1896-1932

The Progressive Era

The election of William McKinley in 1896 marked a new era of Republican dominance and is sometimes cited as a realigning election. He relied heavily on finance, railroads, industry and the middle classes for his support and cemented the Republicans as the party of business. His campaign manager, Ohio’s Marcus Hanna, developed a detailed plan for getting contributions from the business world, and McKinley outspent his rival William Jennings Bryan by a large margin. McKinley was the first president to promote pluralism, arguing that prosperity would be shared by all ethnic and religious groups.

Theodore Roosevelt was the most dynamic personality of the era. He became the President after McKinley was assassinated in 1901. After promising to continue McKinley’s policies, he won reelection in 1904. He then veered left, attacking big business and busting the trusts. Roosevelt anointed William Howard Taft in 1908, but Taft worked more with the conservatives led by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, although more trusts were broken up under Taft than Roosevelt. The Payne-Aldrich tariff angered Midwestern insurgents. The widening division between progressive and conservative forces in the party resulted in a third-party candidacy for Roosevelt on the Progressive, or “Bull Moose” ticket in the election of 1912. He finished ahead of Taft, but the split in the Republican vote resulted in a decisive victory for Democrat Woodrow Wilson, temporarily interrupting the Republican era.

The party controlled the presidency throughout the 1920s, running on a platform of opposition to the League of Nations, high tariffs, and promotion of business interests. Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were resoundingly elected in 1920, 1924, and 1928 respectively. Although the party did very well in large cities and among ethnic Catholics in presidential elections of 1920-24, it was unable to hold those gains in 1928.

In October 1929, the stock market crashed, giving rise to the Great Depression. Hoover, by nature an activist, attempted to do what he could to alleviate the widespread suffering caused by the Depression, but his strict adherence to what he believed were Republican principles precluded him from establishing relief directly from the federal government. The Democrats made major gains in the 1930 midterm elections, giving them congressional parity (though not control) for the first time since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.

Fifth party system: 1933-1980

Opposing the New Deal Coalition: 1933-1953

In 1932, Hoover was swamped in a landslide defeat to Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal Coalition, which became a dominant fact of American political life for the middle third of the century. Democrats also gained large majorities in both houses of Congress.

After Roosevelt took office in 1933, New Deal legislation sailed through Congress at lightning speed. In the 1934 midterm elections, ten Republican senators went down to defeat, leaving them with only 25 against 71 Democrats. The House of Representatives was also split in a similar ratio. The “Second New Deal” was heavily criticized by the Republicans in Congress, who likened it to class warfare and socialism. The volume of legislation, as well as the inability of the Republicans to block it, soon made the opposition to Roosevelt develop into bitterness and sometimes hatred for “that man in the White House.”

Little known Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas ran an ineffective moderate campaign as the Roosevelt landslide of 1936 swept 46 states. The GOP was left with only 16 senators and 88 representatives to oppose the New Deal.
Roosevelt alienated many conservative Democrats, in 1937, by his unexpected plan to “pack” the Supreme Court via the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. Following a sharp recession that hit early in 1938, major strikes all over the country, and Roosevelt’s failed efforts to purge the conservatives from the court, the GOP gained 75 House seats in 1938. Conservative Democrats, mostly from the South, joined with Republicans led by Senator Robert A. Taft to create the conservative coalition, which dominated domestic issues in Congress until 1964.

From 1939 through 1941, there was a sharp debate within the GOP about support for Britain in World War II. Internationalists, such as Henry Stimson and Frank Knox, wanted to support Britain and isolationists, such as Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, strongly opposed these moves as unwise, if not unconstitutional. The America First movement was a bipartisan coalition of isolationists. In 1940, a total unknown, Wendell Willkie, at the last minute, won over the party, the delegates and was nominated. He crusaded against the inefficiencies of the New Deal and Roosevelt’s break with the strong tradition against a third term. Pearl Harbor ended the isolationist-internationalist debate. The Republicans further cut the Democratic majority in the 1942 midterm elections. With wartime production creating prosperity, the Conservative coalition terminated most New Deal relief programs.

As a minority party, the GOP had two wings: The “left wing” supported most of the New Deal while promising to run it more efficiently. The “right wing” opposed the New Deal from the beginning and managed to repeal large parts during the 1940s in cooperation with conservative southern Democrats in the conservative coalition. Liberals, led by Dewey, dominated the Northeast. Conservatives, led by Taft, dominated the Midwest. The West was split, and the South was still solidly Democratic. Dewey did not reject the New Deal programs, but demanded more efficiency, more support for economic growth, and less corruption. He was more willing than Taft to support Britain in the early years of the war.

In 1944, a clearly frail Roosevelt defeated Dewey, who was now governor of New York, for his fourth term, but Dewey made a good showing that would lead to his selection as the candidate in 1948.

Roosevelt died in office in 1945, and Harry S. Truman became president. With the end of the war, unrest among organized labor led to many strikes in 1946, and the resulting disruptions helped the GOP. With the blunders of the Truman administration in 1945 and 1946, the slogans “Had Enough?” and “To Err is Truman” became Republican rallying cries, and the GOP won control of Congress for the first time since 1928, with Joseph Martin as Speaker of the House. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was designed to balance the rights of management and labor. It was the central issue of many elections in industrial states in the 1940s and 1950s, but the unions were never able to repeal it.

In 1948, with Republicans split left and right, Truman boldly called Congress into a special session, and sent it a load of liberal legislation consistent with the Dewey platform, and dared them to act on it, knowing that the conservative Republicans would block action. Truman then attacked the Republican “Do-Nothing Congress” as a whipping boy for all of the nation’s problems. Truman stunned Dewey and the Republicans with a plurality of just over two million popular votes (out of nearly 49 million cast), but a decisive 303-189 victory in the Electoral College.

Eisenhower and Nixon: 1953-1974

After the war the isolationists in the conservative wing opposed the United Nations, and were half-hearted in exercising opposition to the expansion of Communism around the world. Dwight Eisenhower, a NATO commander, defeated Taft in 1952 on foreign policy issues. The two men were not far apart on domestic issues. Eisenhower was an exception to most presidents in that he usually let Nixon handle party affairs (controlling the national committee and taking the roles of chief spokesman and chief fundraiser). Richard Nixon was defeated in 1960 in a close election, dooming his liberal wing of the party. The conservatives made a comeback in 1964 as Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller in the primary. Goldwater was strongly opposed to the New Deal and the United Nations, but he rejected isolationism and containment, calling for an aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy. He was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in a landslide that brought down many senior Republican Congressmen across the country. Goldwater blamed the magnitude of his defeat on the assassination of John F. Kennedy a year before the election, and on Johnson running a campaign of smears.

The New Deal Coalition collapsed in the mid 1960s in the face of urban riots, the Vietnam war, the opposition of many Southern conservatives to desegregation and the Civil Rights movement and disillusionment that the New Deal could be revived by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Nixon defeated both Hubert Humphrey and George C. Wallace in 1968. When the Democratic left took over their party in 1972, Nixon won reelection by carrying 49 states. His involvement in Watergate brought disgrace and a forced resignation in 1974. The Democrats made major gains in Congress, and in 1976 defeated Gerald Ford in a close race.

Sixth party system: 1980-present

The Reagan era

Ronald Reagan produced a major realignment with his 1980 and 1984 landslides. In 1980, the Reagan coalition was possible because of Democratic losses in most social-economic groups. In 1984, Reagan won nearly 60% of the popular vote and carried every state except his Democratic opponent Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia, creating a record 525 electoral vote total (of 538 possible). Even in Minnesota, Mondale won by a mere 3,761 votes, meaning Reagan came within less than 3,800 votes of winning in all fifty states.

Political commentators, trying to explain how Reagan had won by such a large margin, used the term “Reagan Democrat” to describe a Democratic voter who had defected to vote for Reagan. The Reagan Democrats were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterwards, but who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. They were mostly white, blue-collar, lived in traditionally Democratic areas, and were attracted to Reagan’s social conservatism on issues such as abortion, and to his hawkish foreign policy. They did not continue to vote Republican in 1992 or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not generally used to describe those southern whites who permanently changed party affiliation from Democratic to Republican during the Reagan administration. Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, analyzed white, largely unionized auto workers in suburban Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63% for Kennedy in 1960 and 66% for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans and social liberals. Democrat Bill Clinton targeted the Reagan Democrats with considerable success in 1992 and 1996. Also significant in those years was the entrance of Ross Perot into the presidential race; almost all of the Republican voters who deserted Bush moved to Perot. With Perot taking 30% of the independent vote in 1992 (along with 17% of the Republican vote and 13% of the Democratic vote), Clinton was able to win the presidency with the votes of only 43% of the electorate. Perot ran again in 1996 and won only 8% of the popular vote.

Reagan reoriented American politics. He claimed credit in 1984 for an economic renewal—“It’s morning in America again!” was the campaign slogan. Income taxes were slashed 25% and the punitive rates abolished. The frustrations of stagflation were resolved, as no longer did soaring inflation and recession pull the country down. Deregulation, handled in bipartisan fashion, removed the last traces of the New Deal, with the exception of Social Security. Working again in bipartisan fashion, the Social Security financial crises were resolved for the next 25 years.

In foreign affairs, bipartisanship was not in evidence. Most Democrats doggedly opposed Reagan’s efforts to support the Contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and to support the dictatorial governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador against Communist guerrilla movements. He took a hard line against the Soviet Union, alarming Democrats who wanted a nuclear freeze, but he succeeded in increasing the military budget and launching the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—labeled “Star Wars” by its opponents—that the Soviets could not match. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow, many conservative Republicans were dubious of the growing friendship between him and Reagan. Gorbachev tried to save communism in Russia first by ending the expensive arms race with America, then (1989) by shedding the East European empire. Communism finally collapsed in Russia in 1991. President George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, tried to temper feelings of triumphalism lest there be a backlash in Russia, but the palpable sense of victory in the cold War was a success that validated for Republicans the aggressive foreign policies Reagan had taught them. As Haynes Johnson, one of his harshest critics admitted, “His greatest service was in restoring the respect of Americans for themselves and their own government after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate, the frustration of the Iran hostage crisis and a succession of seemingly failed presidencies.” Yet the restoration of faith in the government was an ironic twist for the man who personally distrusted government so much.

The capture of the House and Senate in 1994

After the election of Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1992, the Republican Party, led by House Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich campaigning on a Contract With America elected majorities to both houses of Congress in the Republican Revolution of 1994. It was the first time since 1952 that the Republicans secured control of both houses of U.S. Congress, which, with the exception of the Senate during 2001-2002, was retained through 2006. This capture and subsequent holding of Congress represented a major legislative turnaround, as Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for the forty years preceding 1995, with the exception of the 1981-1987 Congress in which Republicans controlled the Senate.
In 1994, Republican Congressional candidates ran on a platform of major reforms of government with measures such as a balanced budget amendment and welfare reform. These measures and others formed the famous Contract with America, which represented the first effort to have a party platform in an off-year election. The Republicans passed some of their proposals, but failed on others such as term limits. Democratic President Bill Clinton opposed some of the social agenda initiatives but he co-opted the proposals for welfare reform and a balanced federal budget. The result was a major change in the welfare system, which conservatives hailed and liberals bemoaned. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed to muster the two-thirds majority required to pass a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress. In 1995, a budget battle with Clinton led to the brief shutdown of the federal government, an event which contributed to Clinton’s victory in the 1996 election. That year, the Republicans nominated Bob Dole, who was unable to transfer his success in Senate leadership to a viable presidential campaign. Ross Perot ran again (this time on the Reform Party ticket), once again draining away a large percentage of the Republicans’ support.

Since 2000
With the victory of George W. Bush in the close 2000 election against the Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore, the Republican party gained control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952, only to lose control of the Senate by one vote when Vermont Senator James Jeffords left the Republican party to become an independent in 2001 and chose to vote with the Democratic caucus. In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by a margin of 543,816 votes, marking the first time since 1888 that a candidate who did not receive a majority of the popular vote received the majority of the electoral college.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Bush pursued the War on Terrorism that included the invasion of Afghanistan, USA PATRIOT Act, and the invasion of Iraq. By November 2001, the radical Islamist Taliban regime was removed from power in Kabul, Afghanistan, although al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has yet to be captured. In March 2003, Bush chose to invade Iraq with a coalition of allied countries after a lengthy diplomatic effort through the United Nations.

The Republican Party fared well in the 2002 midterm elections, solidifying its hold on the House and regaining control of the Senate, in the run-up to the war in Iraq. This marked just the first time since 1934, 1902, and the civil war that the party in control of the White House gained seats in a midterm election in both houses of Congress. Bush was renominated without opposition for the 2004 election and titled his political platform “A Safer World and a More Hopeful America” . It expressed Bush’s commitment to winning the War on Terror, ushering in an Ownership Era, and building an innovative economy to compete in the world.

On November 2, 2004, Bush was re-elected, while Republicans gained seats in both houses of Congress. Bush won the election with 286 electoral votes with Senator John F. Kerry receiving 251. Bush also received 62 million popular votes to 59 million for Senator John F. Kerry. With 51% of the popular vote, Bush achieved the first popular majority since his father was elected in 1988.

Bush told reporters “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.” He announced his agenda in January 2005, but as his popularity in the polls waned, his troubles mounted. His campaign to add personal savings accounts to the Social Security system and make major revisions of the tax code were postponed. He succeeded in selecting conservatives to head four of the most important agencies, Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States and Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. He failed to win conservative approval for Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, replacing her with Samuel Alito, whom the Senate confirmed in January 2006. He secured additional tax cuts and blocked moves to raise taxes. Through 2006, Bush strongly defended his policy in Iraq, saying the Coalition was winning. He secured the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act, stating that it is significant that there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 11 September 2001.

In September, 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroyed large sections of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. The Bush Administration’s response to this crisis was widely viewed as inadequate, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was forced to resign. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay went to a criminal trial in Texas for alleged campaign funding abuses, and had to step down as Majority Leader in October 2005 and resign his Congressional seat in June 2006. In 2006 two other Republican Congressmen went to prison for corruption, as the Democrats highlighted the scandals.

In the November 2005 off-year elections, New York City, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg won a landslide re-election, the fourth straight Republican victory in what is otherwise a Democratic stronghold. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger failed in his effort to use the ballot initiative to enact laws the Democrats blocked in the state legislature.

In September 2006, as a result of a sex scandal with Congressional pages involving sexually-explicit instant messages, Mark Foley stated that he was gay and an alcoholic and would be stepping down from his seat in the House of Representatives.

In November 2006, Democrats defeated Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections giving the Democrats control of the House and Senate.

In the 2006 Republican caucus leadership elections, Speaker Hastert did not run and Republicans chose Rep. John Boehner of Ohio for House Minority Leader. With the departure of Senator Frist, Senators chose whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for Minority Leader, and in a major surprise chose their former leader Trent Lott as Senate Whip by one vote over Lamar Alexander. They assumed these roles in the 110th Congress in January 2007.