Republican Party (United States)

Republican Party
Abbreviation	GOP
Chairperson	Michael Whatley
Governing body	Republican National Committee
Speaker of the House	Mike Johnson
Senate Minority Leader	Mitch McConnell
House Majority Leader	Steve Scalise
Founders	Alvan E. Bovay[1] Henry J. Raymond[2] ... and others Horace Greeley John C. Frémont Francis P. Blair Edwin D. Morgan Amos Tuck Salmon P. Chase
Founded	March 20, 1854; 170 years ago (1854-03-20) Ripon, Wisconsin, U.S.
Merger of	Whig Party[3][4][5][6] Free Soil Party[7] Anti-Nebraska movement[8]
Headquarters	310 First Street SE, Washington, D.C., U.S.
Student wing	College Republicans High School Republican National Federation
Youth wing	Young Republicans Teen Age Republicans
Women's wing	National Federation of Republican Women
Overseas wing	Republicans Overseas
LGBT wing	Log Cabin Republicans[a]
Ideology	Conservatism[10] Factions: Centrism[11] Christian right[12] Libertarianism[13] Right-wing populism[14]
Political position	Center-right[15] to right-wing[16]
International affiliation	International Democracy Union[17] Asia Pacific Democracy Union European Conservatives and Reformists Party
Caucuses	Problem Solvers Caucus Republican Governance Group Republican Main Street Caucus Republican Study Committee Freedom Caucus
Colors	Red
Senate	49 / 100
House of Representatives	220 / 435
State Governors	27 / 50
State upper chambers	1,110 / 1,973
State lower chambers	2,948 / 5,413
Territorial Governors	0 / 5
Territorial upper chambers	12 / 97
Territorial lower chambers	9 / 91
Election symbol
Website
gop.com

The United States Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party) is one of the two biggest political parties in the United States. Since the mid-1850s, the party's main opponent has been the Democratic Party. Both political parties have controlled American politics ever since.

The party sits at the right-wing of the American political spectrum, with the Democratic Party being positioned to their left. However, there also factions of the Republican Party that are center-right to far-right. One of the most famous far-right members of the party is Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Ideologically, Republicans favor fiscal and social conservatism.^[18] It opposes abortion,^[19] euthanasia, labor unions, affirmative action,^[20] marijuana legalization, and a high minimum wage.^[21] It advocates for low taxes,^[22] limited government,^[23] gun rights,^[24] free markets, and free trade.^[25] It did, however, hold protectionist opinions during its early days,^[26] for example during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. It also held anti-free trade opinions during Donald Trump’s presidency.^[27]

The symbol of the Republican party is the elephant. This symbol was first used in 1874 in a political cartoon by Thomas Nast.^[28]

The Republican National Committee, or the RNC, is the main organization for the Republican Party in all 50 states. The Republican Party is not the same political party as the Democratic-Republican Party. A state where most voters vote for Republican politicians is called a red state.

1. ↑ The Origin of the Republican Party by Prof. A. F. Gilman, Ripon College, WI, 1914.
2. ↑ Widmer, Ted (March 19, 2011). "A Very Mad-Man". Opinionator. The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
3. ↑ "Political Parties | Northern Illinois University Digital Library". digital.lib.niu.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
4. ↑ Howe, Daniel Walker (Winter 1995). "Why Abraham Lincoln Was a Whig". Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. 16 (1). hdl:2027/spo.2629860.0016.105. ISSN 1945-7987.
5. ↑ "Historical Context: The Breakdown of the Party System | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History". www.gilderlehrman.org. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
6. ↑ "Major American Political Parties of the 19th Century". Norwich University Resource Library. Retrieved 2024-05-28.
7. ↑ McPherson, James (2003) [1988]. The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-19-974390-2.
8. ↑ James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: Volume I. The Coming of War, second edition (ISBN 0-07045837-5) p. 94.
9. ↑ Sonmez, Felicia (November 23, 2021). "Republican National Committee dismisses call for Ronna McDaniel to resign as chairwoman over outreach to LGBTQ voters". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 12, 2022. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
10. ↑ Smith, Robert C. (2021). "Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and the Future of the Republican Party and Conservatism in America". American Political Thought. 10 (2): 283–289. doi:10.1086/713662. ISSN 2161-1580. S2CID 233401184. Retrieved September 21, 2022.
11. ↑ Morgan, David (August 21, 2023). "Republican feud over 'root canal' spending cuts raises US government shutdown risk". Reuters. Retrieved May 13, 2024.
12. ↑
    • Baker, Paula; Critchlow, Donald T., eds. (2020). "Chapter 15: Religion and American Politics". The Oxford Handbook of American Political History. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 278–294. ISBN 9780199341788.
    • Lewis, Andrew R. (August 28, 2019). "The Inclusion-Moderation Thesis: The U.S. Republican Party and the Christian Right". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.665. ISBN 978-0-19-022863-7. Considering all the evidence, the most apt description is that conservative Christianity has transformed the Republican Party, and the Republican Party has transformed conservative Christianity ... With its inclusion in the Republican Party, the Christian right has moderated on some aspects ... At the same time, the Christian right has altered Republican politics.
    • Perry, Samuel L. (2022). "American Religion in the Era of Increasing Polarization". Annual Review of Sociology. 48 (1). San Mateo, California: Annual Reviews: 87–107. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-031021-114239. ISSN 0360-0572. p. 91: Unaffiliated Americans were not abandoning orthodox beliefs, but rather, the increase in "no religion" was confined to political moderates and liberals who were likely reacting to the growing alignment of Christian identity with the religious Right and Republicans.3
    • Berlet, Chip; Hardisty, Berlet, eds. (2019). "Drifting Right and going wrong: An overview of the US political Right". Trumping Democracy: From Reagan to the Alt-right (1 ed.). London: Routledge. p. 91. doi:10.4324/9781315438412-9. ISBN 9781315438412. Within the Republican Party, the Christian Right competes with more secular, upstart free market libertarianism and button-down business conservatism for dominance.
    • Gannon, Thomas M. (July–September 1981). "The New Christian Right in America as a Social and Political Force". Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions. 26 (52–1). Paris: Éditions de l'EHESS: 69–83. doi:10.3406/assr.1981.2226. ISSN 0335-5985. JSTOR 30125411.
    • Ben Barka, Mokhtar (December 2012). "The New Christian Right's relations with Israel and with the American Jews: the mid-1970s onward". E-Rea. 10 (1). Aix-en-Provence and Marseille: Centre pour l'Édition Électronique Ouverte on behalf of Aix-Marseille University. doi:10.4000/erea.2753. ISSN 1638-1718. S2CID 191364375.
    • Palmer, Randall; Winner, Lauren F. (2005) [2002]. "Protestants and Homosexuality". Protestantism in America. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 149–178. ISBN 9780231111317. LCCN 2002023859.
    • "Content Pages of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Social Science". Archived from the original on March 3, 2016.
    • Trollinger, William (October 8, 2019). "Fundamentalism turns 100, a landmark for the Christian Right". The Conversation. ISSN 2201-5639. Archived from the original on May 7, 2022. Retrieved July 3, 2022. The emergent Christian Right attached itself to the Republican Party, which was more aligned with its members' central commitments than the Democrats ... By the time Falwell died, in 2007, the Christian Right had become the most important constituency in the Republican Party. It played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump in 2016.
    • Thomson-DeVeaux, Amelia (October 27, 2022). "How Much Power Do Christians Really Have?". FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on April 10, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2024. In the 1980s and 1990s, as white Christian conservatives forged an alliance with the Republican Party, Christianity itself started to become a partisan symbol. Identifying as a Christian was no longer just about theology, community or family history — to many Americans, the label became uncomfortably tangled with the Christian Right's political agenda, which was itself becoming increasingly hard to separate from the GOP's political agenda.
13. ↑ Wilbur, Miller (2012). "Libertarianism". The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. Vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. pp. 1006–1007. ISBN 978-1-4129-8876-6. While right-libertarianism has been equated with libertarianism in general in the United States, left-libertarianism has become a more predominant aspect of politics in western European democracies over the past three decades. ... Since the 1950s, libertarianism in the United States has been associated almost exclusively with right-libertarianism ... As such, right-libertarianism in the United States remains a fruitful discourse with which to articulate conservative claims, even as it lacks political efficacy as a separate ideology. However, even without its own movement, libertarian sensibility informs numerous social movements in the United States, including the U.S. patriot movement, the gun-rights movement, and the incipient Tea Party movement.
14. ↑ Cite error: The named reference Arhin-2023 was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
15. ↑ Sources for center-right:
    • Gidron, Norm; Zilbatt, Daniel (2019). "Center-Right Political Parties in Advanced Democracies" (PDF). Annual Review of Political Science. 22: 18–19, 27–28. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-090717-092750. ISSN 1094-2939. Retrieved June 17, 2024.
    • Keckler, Charles; Rozell, Mark J. (April 3, 2015). "The Libertarian Right and the Religious Right". Perspectives on Political Science. 44 (2): 92–99. doi:10.1080/10457097.2015.1011476. To better understand the structure of cooperation and competition between these groups, we construct an anatomy of the American center-right, which identifies them as incipient factions within the conservative movement and its political instrument, the Republican Party.
    • Donovan, Todd (October 2, 2019). "Authoritarian attitudes and support for radical right populists". Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties. 29 (4): 448–464. doi:10.1080/17457289.2019.1666270. A strict two-party system, such as the United States, does not fit the tripolar logic. If authoritarian attitudes exist in an electorate that effectively has no potential for anything but a choice between one centre-left and one centre-right party, people with such attitudes may find a place in one of the two dominant parties.
    • Cooperman, Rosalyn; Shufeldt, Gregory; Conger, Kimberly (May 2022). "The life of the parties: Party activists and the 2016 presidential election". Party Politics. 28 (3): 3. doi:10.1177/1354068820988635. The most relevant distinctions within the parties' activist bases are likely to be between the most conservative Republicans and center-right Republicans and between the most liberal Democrats and center-left Democrats. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats no longer exist within either party's activist base.^{[not in the source given]}
    • Carter, Neil; Keith, Daniel; Vasilopoulou, Sofia; Sindre, Gyda M. (March 8, 2023). The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties. p. 140. doi:10.4324/9780429263859. ISBN 978-0-429-26385-9. A primary driver of comparisons between the USA and other Anglosphere centre-right parties appears to be cultural and language affinities.
16. ↑ Sources for right-wing:
    • McKay, David (2020), Crewe, Ivor; Sanders, David (eds.), "Facilitating Donald Trump: Populism, the Republican Party and Media Manipulation", Authoritarian Populism and Liberal Democracy, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 107–121, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-17997-7_7, ISBN 978-3-030-17997-7, retrieved 2024-06-13, the Republicans changed from being a right of centre coalition of moderates and conservatives to an unambiguously right-wing party that was hostile not only to liberal views but also to any perspective that clashed with the core views of an ideologically cohesive conservative cadre of party faithfuls
    • Greenberg, David (2021-01-27). "An Intellectual History of Trumpism". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 2024-06-13. The larger ideology that the president-elect represents is a post-Iraq War, post-crash, post-Barack Obama update of what used to be called paleoconservatism: On race and immigration, where the alt-right affinities are most pronounced, its populist ideas are carrying an already right-wing party even further right.
    • Wineinger, Catherine; Nugent, Mary K. (2020-01-02). "Framing Identity Politics: Right-Wing Women as Strategic Party Actors in the UK and US". Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. 41 (1): 5. doi:10.1080/1554477X.2020.1698214. ISSN 1554-477X.
    • Jessoula, Matteo; Natili, Marcello; Pavolini, Emmanuele (8 August 2022). "'Exclusionary welfarism': a new programmatic agenda for populist right-wing parties?". Contemporary Politics. 28 (4): 447–449. doi:10.1080/13569775.2021.2011644. ISSN 1356-9775.
17. ↑ "Members". IDU. Archived from the original on July 16, 2015.
18. ↑ Smith, Robert C. (2021). "Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and the Future of the Republican Party and Conservatism in America". American Political Thought. 10 (2): 283–289. doi:10.1086/713662. S2CID 233401184.
19. ↑ "Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands". consent.yahoo.com. Archived from the original on 2023-01-30. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
20. ↑ Staff, Media Matters (10 June 2020). "Ben Shapiro: "The only aspects of American life that are legally racist are legally racist on behalf of minority groups"". Media Matters for America. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
21. ↑ Stolberg, Sheryl Gay; Smialek, Jeanna (2019-07-18). "House Passes Bill to Raise Minimum Wage to $15, a Victory for Liberals". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
22. ↑ Appelbaum, Binyamin (2017-12-02). "Debt Concerns, Once a Core Republican Tenet, Take a Back Seat to Tax Cuts". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
23. ↑ Jacobs, Nicholas F.; King, Desmond; Milkis, Sidney M. (June 2019). "Building a Conservative State: Partisan Polarization and the Redeployment of Administrative Power". Perspectives on Politics. 17 (2): 453–469. doi:10.1017/S1537592718003511. ISSN 1537-5927. S2CID 181764492.
24. ↑ Mitchell, Travis (2017-06-22). "1. The demographics of gun ownership". Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
25. ↑ Baldwin, Robert E. (2000). Congressional trade votes : from NAFTA approval to fast-track defeat. Georgetown University Law Library. Washington, DC : Institute for International Economics. ISBN 978-0-88132-267-5.
26. ↑ Frankel, Jeffrey. "The Republicans have a long history of protectionism". MarketWatch. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
27. ↑ "Is the GOP Still the Party of Free Trade?". www.reaganfoundation.org. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
28. ↑ Cartoon of the Day: "The Third-Term Panic". Retrieved on 2008-09-01.