What do the Republicans stand for?
America is effectively a two-party system. Here's a look at the Party of Lincoln ... and Trump
![The elephant has become an enduring symbol of the GOP](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/W6zFxgd2Jm65bTHt8FCUm8-415-80.jpg)
The United States has been a two-party democracy for most of its existence, much to the chagrin of some of its anti-partisan founders. Since 1860, those two parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
The Republican Party emerged in 1854 from the embers of the anti-slavery movement and the ashes of the Whigs. After its 1856 nominee lost, the Republican Party made its presidential debut with Abraham Lincoln in the pivotal election of 1860. The Republicans then held the White House for most of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, up until Franklin D. Roosevelt's election in 1932. The Party of Lincoln has changed a lot over the past 160 years. Here's a look at what today's Republican Party stands for, and a little history of how it got here.
What do today's Republicans stand for?
"Republicans believe in liberty, economic prosperity, preserving American values and traditions, and restoring the American dream for every citizen of this great nation," the Republican National Committee said, introducing its latest party platform. In this case, the platform from 2016 was reused in 2020 with no changes.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
![https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516-320-80.jpg)
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Republican Party said that its legacy, being founded "for the purpose of ending slavery," compels it "to patriotically defend America's values" and "preserve America's greatness," a nod to de facto party leader and former president Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) slogan.
Republicans have traditionally pursued low taxes, especially for companies and for wealthy individuals whose tax burden is often higher. They are also for less federal regulation of the economy and environment. As a result of this anti-regulation stance, Republicans are typically proponents of certain individual rights, notably gun ownership. The party opposes affirmative action and organized labor, and has a longstanding goal of trimming or eliminating government-funded social programs like Social Security and Medicare to reduce government spending. The GOP is more comfortable regulating the private, non-economic sphere, backing hard limits on abortion and LGBTQ rights, and often works to insert Judeo-Christian prayer into public life.
The Republican Party has also pushed for robust military spending — at least after Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" in 1961 — and has been more willing to pursue unilateral military action at the expense of international alliances.
How are Republicans different than Democrats?
The Democratic Party generally wants to use government to make society work better for more people through social and economic programs and a more comprehensive safety net. That requires money, so Democrats favor collecting more tax revenue, especially from wealthy people and companies. Republicans traditionally believe the free market is a more efficient way to solve societal problems.
The Democratic Party is less economically libertarian than the Republican Party but tends to favor keeping the government out of personal decisions, notably when it comes to abortion access and sexual and gender issues.
In the past few decades, Republicans have come to dominate rural areas while Democrats have gained strength in larger cities and urban areas. The suburbs have become political battlegrounds that often decided which party wins Congress and the White House.
How have the Republican Party's positions changed over the years?
When the Republican Party was founded, it was not opposed to foreceful federal intervention in the economy or society — quite the opposite — and its power base was the urban northeast.
In the 1860s amd 1870s, the Republicans enacted, "over Democratic opposition," a "highly ambitious program for expanding federal power," including aid for the transcontinental railroad, the state university system, the Homestead Act for Western settlers, and the civil rights of Black former slaves through the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14th Amendment and creating of the Justice Department, Eric Rauchway, a history professor at the University of California, Davis, wrote in the Edge of the American West blog.
From the 1890s through the 1920s, both parties were "promising an augmented federal government devoted in various ways to the cause of social justice," but by the Calvin Coolidge administration the Republican Party began to "sound like the modern Republican Party, rhetorically devoted to smaller government," Rauchway added. That "rhetorical tendency" was cemented in "the early 1930s and the era of Republican opposition to the New Deal."
It would take another decade or so, starting in World War II, for the Republicans to switch roles with the Democrats on civil rights for Black Americans. The party's 1952 platform already opposed federal civil rights legislation, and "many white Southerners began migrating to the GOP due to their opposition to big government, expanded labor unions and Democratic support for civil rights," History.com recounted. "Meanwhile, many Black voters, who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War, began voting Democratic after the Depression and the New Deal." By the 1970s, the two parties had effectively traded places from where each had stood a century earlier.
What's with the elephant and the color red?
The Republicans became associated with elephants — and gained their Grand Old Party (GOP) nickname — in the 1870s. Elephants had been used to depict Republicans in a 1864 Abraham Lincoln campaign newspaper and Harper's Weekly in 1872, Helen Kampion reported in the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance's Our White House blog. But it was influential political cartoonist Thomas Nast who sealed the idea of Republicans as elephants (and Democrats as donkeys) in an 1874 cartoon called "Third Term Panic," which warned about President Ulysses Grant's flirtation with a third term in office.
The first recorded Republican use of Grand Old Party was in 1874, when party officials in post–Civil War Minnesota boasted that "the grand old party that saved the country is still true to the principles that gave it birth," The Washington Post reported. (Democrats had used "grand old party" to describe their much-older party in 1859 and 1860.) Some Republican publications experimented with Gallant Old Party in the 1880s, but use of the initials GOP as a placeholder for the Republican Party is actually attributed to a Cincinnati Gazette typesetter who ran out of space in an 1884 article and improvised.
Republicans have officially embraced red as their color, but the idea came from network news broadcasters who decided during the prolonged 2000 presidential election count that states won by Republican George W. Bush were red, and those won by Democrat Al Gore were blue.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
How can we fix tourism?
Today's Big Question Local protests over negative impact of ever-rising visitor numbers could change how we travel forever
By The Week UK Published
-
Simone Biles: Rising – an 'elegantly paced and vulnerable' portrait of the gymnast
The Week Recommends Netflix's four-part documentary is more than a 'riveting comeback story'
By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK Published
-
Paloma recipe: the cocktail of the summer
The Week Recommends This refreshing drink balances the fresh and fizzy taste of grapefruit soda with a subtle flavour of smooth tequila
By Rebekah Evans, The Week UK Published
-
Harris clinches Democratic support, raises $81M
Speed Read President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed her as his replacement
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
The convention speakers whose political stars rose
The Explainer Why you're likely to see the future leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties at the conventions
By David Faris Published
-
The GOP is Donald Trump Jr.'s party now
In The Spotlight The former president's gun-loving, live-streaming adult son has emerged as more than just his father's namesake — he's become a Republican powerhouse of his own
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
How Biden's enablers may have delayed his bowing out
Talking Points Joe Biden's inner circle faces calls for a reckoning for allegedly shielding the president — and the public — from questions of aging and electoral viability
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Was Teamster boss' RNC speech a watershed moment for unions or betrayal of labor?
In The Spotlight Sean O'Brien pushed bipartisanship at one of the most partisan events of the year, but not everyone is on board with his unexpected political outreach
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
The Democrats 'resigned to a second Trump presidency'
Talking Points Did the assassination attempt end Biden's election chances?
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
How could J.D. Vance impact the special relationship?
Today's Big Question Trump's hawkish pick for VP said UK is the first 'truly Islamist country' with a nuclear weapon
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Are down-ticket Democrats doomed?
Talking Points President Joe Biden's refusal to step back from his reelection campaign has some local Democrats wondering if their own races are in trouble — but not everyone is worried
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published