History of the Republican Party (United States)

[39] Following the 1864 elections, Radical Republicans Led by Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House set the agenda by demanding more aggressive action against slavery and more vengeance toward the Confederates.

With the election of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868, the Radicals had control of Congress and the party attempted to build a solid Republican base in the South using the votes of Freedmen, Scalawags and Carpetbaggers,[21] supported directly by United States Army detachments.

Republicans all across the South formed local clubs called Union Leagues that effectively mobilized the voters, discussed issues, and when necessary, fought off Ku Klux Klan (KKK) attacks.

Reconstruction came to an end when the contested election of 1876 was awarded by a special electoral commission 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.

[53] 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.

In 1928, the Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Charles Curtis of Kansas, who grew up on the Kaw Indian reservation, became the first person of significant non-European ancestry to be elected to national office, as Vice President of the United States for Herbert Hoover.

Hoover was by nature an activist and 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.

Following a sharp recession that hit early in 1938, major strikes all over the country, the CIO and AFL competing with each other for membership and Roosevelt's failed efforts to radically reorganize the Supreme Court, the Democrats were in disarray.

Internationalists, such as Henry Stimson and Frank Knox, wanted to support Britain and isolationists, such as Robert A. Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, strongly opposed these moves as unwise for risking a war with Germany.

[91] In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower, an internationalist allied with the Dewey wing, was drafted as a GOP candidate by a small group of Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in order that he challenge Taft on foreign policy issues.

Nixon was narrowly defeated in the 1960 United States presidential election when Democrats, led by John F. Kennedy, successfully reassembled and reinvigorated the New Deal Coalition, which weakened the moderate wing of the Republican party.

[100] In the wake of this loss, the conservative wing of the party made a comeback in 1964 under the leadership of Barry Goldwater, who defeated moderates and liberals such as Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in the Republican presidential primaries that year.

When segregation was outlawed by court order and by the Civil Rights acts of 1964 and 1965, a die-hard element resisted integration, led by Democratic governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Lester Maddox of Georgia, Ross Barnett of Mississippi and, especially George Wallace of Alabama.

Large-scale civic unrest in the inner-city was escalating ( reaching a climax in 1968) and urban white ethnics who had been an important part of the New Deal Coalition felt abandoned by the Democratic Party's concentration on racial minorities.

Some critics, most notably Dan Carter, have alleged that the rapid growth in Republican strength in the South came from a secretly coded message to Wallacites and segregationists that the GOP was a racist anti-black party seeking their votes.

[114][dubious – discuss] In addition to its white middle class base, Republicans attracted strong majorities from the evangelical Christian community and from Southern pockets of traditionalist Roman Catholics in South Louisiana.

On issues, the party's platform moved towards the center by affirming its support for civil rights as well as advocating government regulation and economic intervention where necessary, use of more diplomacy and negotiation in matters of international relations, and an orderly withdrawal of the United States troops in Vietnam.

Voting patterns and poll result indicate that the substantial Republican victory was the consequence of poor economic performance under Carter and the Democrats and did not represent an ideological shift to the right by the electorate.

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".

The seating of Al Franken several months later effectively handed the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, but it was short-lived as the GOP took back its 41st vote when Scott Brown won a special election in Massachusetts in early 2010.

In an interview with National Journal magazine about congressional Republican priorities, McConnell explained that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for (Barack) Obama to be a one-term president".

[136]In March 2013, National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gave a stinging postmortem on the GOP's failures in 2012, calling on the party to reinvent itself and to endorse immigration reform and said: "There's no one reason we lost.

Priebus proposed 219 reforms, including a $10 million marketing campaign to reach women, minorities and gays; a shorter, more controlled primary season; and better data collection and research facilities.

[140] Many leaders from different factions spoke out in 2013 on the need for a new immigration policy in the wake of election results showing a sharp move away from the GOP among Hispanics and Asians, but the Republicans in Congress could not agree on a program and nothing was done.

Much of the party's opposition to Trump stemmed from concerns that his disdain for political correctness, his support from the ethno-nationalist alt-right, and virulent criticism of mainstream media would lose him the election and lead to significant GOP losses in other races.

He confirmed three new Supreme Court justices (cementing a conservative majority),[171] started a trade war with China,[172] signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and removed the US from the Paris Agreement.

[185] In mid-2020, as U.S. deaths kept increasing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans were "far less likely than Democrats to view COVID-19 as a major threat to public health";[186][187] against scientific consensus, Trump denied the efficacy of masks in slowing the spread of the disease.

[194][195] In September 2020, a majority of Republicans believed that the QAnon conspiracy theory – which claimed that Trump was saving the world from a "deep state" cabal of rich, sex-trafficking, pedophile elites – was "mostly or partly true".

These mainly revolved around the eight Republicans who voted to vacate the Speakership, such as Matt Gaetz and Bob Good, who have recruited or endorsed more conservative challengers to swing-state moderates like Don Bacon and Tony Gonzales.

[271][272] Trump and his 2024 campaign claimed that in his second administration, he would end the criminal cases against him (including firing special counsel Jack Smith); pardon January 6 rioters; impose heavy tariffs; lessen legal protections for LGBTQ people; leave abortion access up to the states; nominate new Supreme Court justices; deport illegal immigrants en masse; deregulate business, housing, and energy policies (including climate change policies); dissolve the Department of Education; end the Biden administration's paying off of Americans' student loans; punish schools whose teachers push ideas considered progressive; and have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. run the Department of Health and Human Services.