US Republican Party

The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP ), is one of two major Political Parties within the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. It was founded in 1854 as a coalition of anti-slavery and abolitionist activists and political factions including the liberal-conservative Conscience Whigs, the classical liberal Locofoco Democrats, the center-right Free Soil Party (This included both Democrats and Whigs), the anti-slavery faction of the nativist Know Nothings, the socialist Working Men's Party, and the Temperance movement. It was also founded as a classical liberal and abolitionist party, proposing a reformist vision of an industrial and educated society, based on individual freedom, the "free labor ideal" (social promotion through effort and merit), and the elimination of all forms of economic bondage such as African slavery. As a big tent coalition of anti-extentionist and conservative "Old Line" Whigs, "Old Jacksonian" ex-Democrats, abolitionist Free Soilers and Libertyites, nativist Know Nothings, and socialist Working Men's Party activists, the Republican Party was initially held together by its opposition to slavery. While some modern historians viewed the Republican Party as the Whig Party under a new name, the ex-Democrats contributed to the Republican Party its emphasis on labor, just as the Whigs emphasized internal improvements, a protective tariff, and a strong, central government. Following the abolition of slavery at the aftermath of the American Civil War, however, the party became divided between reformist and moderate elements and traditional elements, the former of whom viewed Reconstruction as corrupt as an overreach of governmental power, and the latter of whom supported the enfranchisement of African-Americans and the introduction of the free labor system in the American South, as well as the preservation of the spoils system. The exodus of ex-Democrats and Free Soilers into the Liberal Republican Party marked the triumph of Whiggish economic ideals within the Republican Party, which would increasingly align itself with business interests, especially the railroads. The moderates came to power in 1877 following years of factional infighting, the Redeemers' seizure of power in much of the South, and the moderate Rutherford B. Hayes' controversial victory in the 1876 presidential election, ending Reconstruction and, under President James A. Garfield, advocating for civil service reform.

The Republicans continued their political hegemony by associating themselves with the prosperity of the Gilded Age during the 1880s, and, by the presidential election of 1896, the Republican Party identified strongly with big business, the gold standard, a protective tariff, and Old Stock (Who were British Protestant heritage) Americans and had given up on attempting to enforce Black suffrage in the South. The party briefly flirted with progressivism during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt from 1901 to 1909, but Roosevelt's protege and successor William Howard Taft oversaw the party's return to conservatism, alienating Roosevelt and the progressive movement, who split and formed the unsuccessful Bull Moose Party in 1912.

From 1912 on, the Republican Party continued to gravitate further to the right, and the New Deal of the 1930s-1940s led to the Republican Party and Conservative Democrats forming a "conservative coalition" in opposition to the Democratic Party's new social liberal platform. The Cold War led to the Republican Party strongly associating itself with anti-communism and social conservatism, and the exodus of white supremacist Southern Democrats to the Republican Party in response to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s led to the gradual demise of the moderate and liberal wing of the Republican Party. Under Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party championed neoliberalism starting in the 1980s, ushering in a new age of politics, the Sixth Party System (This was known as the "Reagan Era"), during which even the Democratic Party was forced to accommodate the new neoliberal consensus and abandon its New Deal ideology, and the formation of the ideology of "American conservatism", a hybrid of neoconservatism and libertarianism, was completed.

This consensus lasted until the 2010s, when the Great Recession led to the rise of the right-wing populist Tea Party movement and, after 2015, Trumpism in opposition to globalism, progressivism, and establishment conservatism. The Trumpist movement took over the party after Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election, and the party continued to support Trump's cult of personality even after his defeat in the 2020 preidential election, with most of its state affiliates censuring Republican congresspeople who voted to impeach him in the aftermath of the 2021 United States coup d'etat attempt. By the early 2020s, the Republican Party identified strongly with cultural conservatism, anti-socialism, "America First" nationalism, anti-immigration policies, and the Christian right.