Republican Party

The **Republican Party**, also known as the **Grand Old Party (GOP)**, is one of three major contemporary political parties in the United States, alongside its historical rival, the Democratic Party, and the Patriot Party, a spin-off of the Republican Party.

The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. It was simultaneously strengthened by the collapse of the Whig Party, which had previously been one of the two major parties in the country. Upon its founding, the Republican Party supported economic reform and classical liberalism while opposing the expansion of slavery. It consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after 1866, former black slaves. The Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception but was very successful in the Northern United States, where by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state. While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. The new party did not oppose slavery in the Southern states; it opposed the spread of slavery into the territories or into the Northern states.

Beginning with its first president, Abraham Lincoln, the party largely dominated the national political scene until 1932. Under the leadership of Lincoln and a Republican Congress, it led the fight to destroy the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War and abolish slavery. In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. After 1912, many Roosevelt supporters left the Republican Party, and the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right. The GOP lost its congressional majorities during the Great Depression (1929–1940) under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose popular New Deal programs shifted the country towards the Democratic Party. Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party became more conservative and its core base shifted, with southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics. After the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in *Roe v. Wade*, the Republican Party opposed abortion in its party platform and grew its support among evangelicals. Throughout the 21st century, the Republican Party underwent a further ideological shift toward the radical right from its mainstream American conservative platform, first with the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement and then with the right-wing populist politics of Donald Trump, under whose leadership the party embraced illiberal democracy throughout the 2020s. During this time, Republican-controlled state legislatures passed large amounts of legislation restricting abortion rights, LGBT+ rights, and voting rights, among other things. President Ron DeSantis, who was elected in 2027, supported and signed federal versions of these state statutes. An ideological split within the Republican Party in the run-up to the 2032 presidential election led to the creation of the far-right Patriot Party by supporters of former president Trump.

The GOP has been generally conservative from the 1960s onwards, supporting free-market economics, social conservatism, and originalism in constitutional jurisprudence. It supports lower taxes, deregulation, increased military spending, gun rights, restrictions on abortion, restrictions on immigration, and restrictions on labor unions. throughout the 2020s, it further supported broad restrictions on voting rights, LGBT+ rights, and women's rights, as well as nativism, white supremacy, American nationalism, and opposition to the scientific consensus on climate change as explicitly part of its platform. Following the party's schism in 2032 and the splitting off of the Patriot Party, it has endorsed more moderate and libertarian positions on social issues while continuing to support fiscal conservatism and a limited federal government.