Following the 1960s era of civil rights legislation, enacted by Democrats, the South became more reliably Republican, and Richard Nixon carried 49 states in the 1972 election, with what he touted as his "silent majority".

The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan realigned national politics, bringing together advocates of free-market economics, social conservatives, and Cold War foreign policy hawks under the Republican banner.

The party grew out of opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened the Kansas and Nebraska Territories to slavery and future admission as slave states.

[48] Former Illinois U.S. representative Abraham Lincoln spent several years building support within the party, campaigning heavily for Frémont in 1856 and making a bid for the Senate in 1858, losing to Democrat Stephen A. Douglas but gaining national attention from the Lincoln–Douglas debates it produced.

His death helped create support for the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which was passed in 1883;[64] the bill was signed into law by Republican president Chester A. Arthur, who succeeded Garfield.

Roosevelt was easily re-elected president in 1936; however, as his second term began, the economy declined, strikes soared, and he failed to take control of the Supreme Court and purge the Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party.

[83]After 1945, the internationalist wing of the GOP cooperated with Truman's Cold War foreign policy, funded the Marshall Plan and supported NATO, despite the continued isolationism of the Old Right.

[96] In the 1994 elections, the Republican Party, led by House minority whip Newt Gingrich, who campaigned on the "Contract with America", won majorities in both chambers of Congress, gained 12 governorships, and regained control of 20 state legislatures.

[115] This period saw the rise of "pro-government conservatives"—a core part of the Bush's base—a considerable group of the Republicans who advocated for increased government spending, greater regulation, and an activist and interventionist foreign policy.

[117][118] However, libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives increasingly found fault with what they saw as Republicans' restricting of vital civil liberties while corporate welfare and the national debt hiked considerably under Bush's tenure.

[135] The Tea Party movement's electoral success began with Scott Brown's upset win in the January Senate special election in Massachusetts; the seat had been held for decades by Democrat Ted Kennedy.

He proposed 219 reforms, including a $10 million marketing campaign to reach women, minorities, and gay people; the setting of a shorter, more controlled primary season; and the creation of better data collection facilities.

Other notable achievements during his presidency included the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017; the creation of the U.S. Space Force, the first new independent military service since 1947; and the brokering of the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states.

[161][162][163] The second half of his term was increasingly controversial, as he implemented a family separation policy for migrants, deployed federal law enforcement forces in response to racial protests and reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic before clashing with health officials over testing and treatment.

[189] Trump - who survived two assassination attempts during the campaign - achieved victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket after his withdrawal in July, winning the electoral college 312–226, becoming the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and (relative to the 2020 election) improving his vote share among working class voters, particularly among young men, those without college degrees, and Hispanic voters.

[192] The idea for the name came from an editorial by the party's leading publicist, Horace Greeley, who called for "some simple name like 'Republican' [that] would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery".

[206] Radical Republicans pressed for abolition as a major war aim and they opposed the moderate Reconstruction plans of Abraham Lincoln as both too lenient on the Confederates and not going far enough to help former slaves.

They opposed allowing ex-Confederate officers to retake political power in the Southern U.S., and emphasized liberty, equality, and the Fifteenth Amendment which provided voting rights for the freedmen.

[211] Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Republicans began the 21st century with the election of George W. Bush in the 2000 United States presidential election and saw the peak of a neoconservative faction that held significant influence over the initial American response to the September 11 attacks through the War on Terror.

[27] Since the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s, the Republican Party has drawn significant support from evangelicals, Mormons,[327] and traditionalist Catholics, partly due to opposition to abortion after Roe v.

[31][250][251] This faction gained strength starting in 2016 with the rise of Donald Trump, demanding that the United States reset its previous interventionist foreign policy and encourage allies and partners to take greater responsibility for their own defense.

The George W. Bush administration took the position that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants, while other prominent Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, strongly oppose the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which they view as torture.

[482][483][484] A survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that "Trump Republicans seem to prefer a US role that is more independent, less cooperative, and more inclined to use military force to deal with the threats they see as the most pressing".

New York, under Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican, eliminated all restrictions on women seeking to terminate pregnancies up to twenty-four weeks gestation.... Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and George H.W.

[497] Historian Randall Balmer notes that Billy Graham's Christianity Today published in 1968 a statement by theologian Bruce Waltke that:[498] "God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed.

Typical of the time, Christianity Today "refused to characterize abortion as sinful" and cited "individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility" as "justifications for ending a pregnancy.

[506] The Republican Party has pursued policies at the national and state-level to restrict embryonic stem cell research beyond the original lines because it involves the destruction of human embryos.

[521] In contrast, George H. W. Bush, formerly a lifelong NRA member, was highly critical of the organization following their response to the Oklahoma City bombing authored by CEO Wayne LaPierre, and publicly resigned in protest.

The party abolished chattel slavery under Abraham Lincoln, defeated the Slave Power, and gave Black people the legal right to vote during Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

Members of the Mormon faith had a mixed relationship with Donald Trump during his tenure, despite 67% of them voting for him in 2016 and 56% of them supporting his presidency in 2018, disapproving of his personal behavior such as that shown during the Access Hollywood controversy.