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Republican Party | |
|---|---|
 Logo | |
| Abbreviation | GOP |
| Chairperson | Ronna McDaniel |
| Founded | March 20, 1854 |
| Membership (2021) | 35,732,180 |
| Political orientation | Neoconservatism Neoliberalism Paleoconservatism Factions: Neo-fascism Trumpism Libertarianism Historical: Abolitionism |
| Political position | Right-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."[1] While this was indeed true for the Republicans under Nixon, this realism would later be overtured in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan, who adopted a policy of fanatical anti-communist aggression against the people's democracies.[4] Domestically, Reagan allied with right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who became a major force in US politics thanks to him.[5]
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
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 V. V. Shimanovskii (1975). Great Soviet Encyclopedia (3rd ed.), vol. 22: 'Republican Party' (Russian: Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija). [PDF] Moscow.
- ↑ ““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. - ↑ “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.
- ↑ “The Nixon policies presumed the possibility of peaceful although competitive coexistence between the US and the USSR. They also assumed that the US and its allies, friends, and associates would be strong enough for their mutual security and well-being even if the Soviet Union did outbuild the US in some categories of military power. Hence, the US could afford to continue the "entitlement" programs bequeathed by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson.
Reagan policy starts with a contrary assumption. The Soviet Union is implacably hostile to the United States and its allies and to its political and economic system. The Soviet Union would take advantage of military superiority over the United States. The Soviet Union wages a constant, often unseen struggle against the United States. Its military power must at the very least be balanced off by equal US military power. No system of alliances is sufficient to balance off Soviet superiority over the US.”
Joseph C. Harsch (1981-04-14). "Reagan vs. Nixon" Christian Science Monitor Weekly. - ↑ Steven P. Miller (2014-05-18). "The evangelical presidency: Reagan's dangerous love affair with the Christian right" Salon.