Team of surgeons waiting off stage to remove Joe's foot from his mouth and another team off stage waiting to remove Ryan's foot from lie'n Joe's ass.

Don't worry Joe, it's covered under Obummercare.

The only way Biden is standing at the end is if his depends hold up.Maybe he should double-bag.

Biden has experience, has knowledge, and has Biden Wit..

.

Biden has to be as feisty as possible to win.

.

In the end, it's the recent good economic data that can really help -

in a matter of 7 days, great data -

-

last Friday, lowest unemployment rate in 4 years - even after Mitt has outsourced so many jobs

Today, the lowest unemployment claims in 5 years..

...

Yes we are better off than 4 years ago...

.

4 more years.

c

Old "biteme" is gonna flame out and crash tonight folks, count on it. That old fool hasn't had an intelligent thought in years. I do, however, agree with him that the middle class has been BURIED these past 4 yrs.

Biden has been on the taxpayer dole most of his adult life. But he is hardly a knowledgeable or experienced politician. Biden is a buffoon, who has made up more stuff to bolster his career then any politician should be allowed to get away with. Biden-isms are not gaffs or him just being Joe as liberals like to portray, they are and always will be nothing more then lies. Ryan will mop the floor with Biden, and it will be another major hit to the Obama campaign. But then again four years of failed policies, rampant spending, gun running and ambassador murder cover ups, and a ton of broken promises are hard to defend.

...foreclosure filings are lowest in 5 years, since the Bush Recession that was made in America.

.

more great news.

Yes, we are better off than 4 years ago.

with vice presidential debate with a mandate to aggressively defend President Barack Obama's record

Good luck joe, not sure how, you of all people can defend an indefencable position.

This is how romney is going to win the election, by running on obamas record. Hahaha

**RR 2012**

@pig

foreclosure rates lowest in years...OMG there's nothing left to foreclose on...the market is wiped out. Good news???????? my townhome that I purchased in'97 for $100k is now valued at $65k the foreclosure killed our market in Nevada. GOOD JOB OBUMMER, might I add thanks again for the change and unemployment at 12.1% in Nevada.

wow, you are one sick puppy. at least you can get some help because of the affordable care act

The majority of Obama's minions are myopic minded single issue constituency voters. As such, they close their eyes to the broader context issues that will impact their life should this anti-American, closet Marxist be reelected!!!

Go to www.homepath.com if interested in buying a foreclose house. many have lost their house and Obama only care that his cash flow continue to fill his wallet. I'm sorry for all you liberal who lost your house but it came with the territory. You voted for Obama you got what you voted for. Now you are so stupid that you will vote for him again. What have he done in four years. All he did was ruin this Nation and the world. and if he win God forbid the entire world will crumble. He is a selfish person and doesn't care if this Nation fall. this Nation gave him his wealth but his heart is on the other side of this world. Vote for Obama and you will regret you did.

Paul Ryan ,,,caught lying...about the stimulus money. When Bush was promoting stimulus money Ryan was voting for it, praising it.

When President Obama took office, that very night Ryan pledged with 14 other republicons to vote against America. Vote against any bill that would make President Obama look good.

Ryan opposed the Obama stimulus plan but soon as it was passed he begged for some of that money in the millions. Said it worked and helped.

During campaign a Teabagger asked him if he took stimulus money and he lied saying over and over he didn't. When caught Lying Ryan tried to blame it on staffers. Then he finally admitted he took the money....LYING RYAN strikes again!!!

Vote for President Obama/Biden 2012

They have been pumping Joe with Ginko Biloba for the last six days so he can remember why he is doing this. Foreign affairs should be fun with dead diplomats, the middle east in chaos and the with administration explanations sounding like a married guy who runs into his wife in a brothel.

PAUL RYAN FOREIGN POLICY EXPERICENCE,...I CAN SEE MILWAUKEE FROM MY WINDOW!

Paul Ryan has ZERO foregn policy expericene!

Paul Ryan declares if he beomes vice president the first thing he wants to do is meet with the president of BeckyBeckyBeckystan!!!!!

Biden has a plethora of facts to drop on Ryan:

A partial list:

The GOP's failed Trickle down theory; the resulting American economic collapse; the swelling of our unemployment numbers; the ludicrous gambling of a de-regulated Wall Street; the resulting lost of countless numbers of our citizens' retirements and investments; millions of GOP inspired home foreclosures; the outsourcing of U.S. jobs; Ryan's beloved Medicare voucher plan that will leave our seniors and the infirmed facing an unbridgeable financial gap; Ryan's wanting to put Social Security in the "private market" which will further risk the program's solvency and sustainability; Ryan's stating that the 47% should get jobs!

Ryan states that the math of the GOP's plan for this country is "too long, to complicated" to explain.

Vice President Biden: Please give Paul "all the time he needs to explain the math and to tell our citizens how the Republican's agenda "will add up for our citizens.

Remind our citizens what is at stake:

- GOP policies that will further devastate America or

- Democratic policies that will move this country forward!

Obama/Biden 2012!

-------------------------------------
-------Do not be fooled.-------
-------------------------------------

Tonight,

Paul Ryan will do what he does best...

LIE.

He will be Mr. Moderate VP. Candidate.

He will not deny nor accept women's rights.

He will stand with Romney the Moderate Mitt.

Paul Lyan does not care what his base thinks nor he cares what the Democrats think.

Lyan only cares what the millions of people watching think.

Lyan will take Myth Romney's advice and say what they think those millions want to hear.

Lyan will say he's pro everything while on TV, he has his own party's back on that.

They know that the only people criticizing will be the Democrats and they do not care as long as their lies are taken seriously by Millions.

Mark my words.

When this is over, remember to refer to this post.

This article is sooooo typical of mainstream media....oh yes Bidens off the cuff comments might get him in trouble....really "off the cuff"...try it for what it is....Stupid comments....IQ lacking dumba$$ comments....i can't stand nbc cauz they just can't be real and tell the truth....that is why they have sequestered him for the last 6 days to try and unstupidify his brain....this is Joe Bidens brain...pea...and this is Paul Ryans brain....firing on all cylinders! Yes you people over 55 will not have a change in his plan to ur Social Security...even though by now im sure you've taken more than you eva put in.....i am will to take a hit being under that age....but am sick of those who aren't willing to take alittle hit for their Country! By the way u liberals can take all the rich's $$$ bout 400 Billion and it wouldn't run the country for a month....so yes we do have a spending problem which we need to fix....no ifs ands or buts bout it....grow up and take the bull by the horns.....and quit whining America....we can work this out without throwing away our values. Redistribution of wealth only works once and then its down the toilet with the middle income families who will take the brundt of paying the tab for the welfare state that has been created.

The Whig Party candidate, Zachary Taylor, won the presidential election of 1848. The Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, is forgotten. Martin Van Buren, a former president and the Free Soil Party candidate, placed third.

The Republican Party did not exist in 1848. There had been a different party called "Republican" or "Democratic-Republican" from about 1790 to about 1836, but that party's story will be covered separately.

The exact founding of the Republican Party is disputed, but aspects of the party were in existence around 1852 and its founding convention was on July 6, 1854 at Jackson, Michigan., In the fall of 1854 it elected 40 members to the U.S. House of Representatives (more if you count representatives co-nominated by the American and Republican parties). By the elections of 1856 it had gone from third party status to being the main rival of the Democrats.

What happened between 1848 and 1854 that could create a full-blown political party in so short a time? There were two main causes: the slavery issue and the rise and fall of the American Party, mistakenly called the Know-Nothing Party. Like the Republican Party, the American Party came into existence quickly and elected a large number of officials; it had the most members of any political party in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1854.

The Whigs, the number 2 party since the 1820's, had been formed in opposition to the Democrats as led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The party was not formed around any particular principles. Led originally by Henry Clay, it was a loose coalition of men who sought office for any of a number of reason. In the north it included abolitionists and people opposed to the expansion of slave territories, and those favoring protective, high tariffs (customs duties); in the south it favored slavery and lower tariffs. This worked fine until about 1850, but the renewed struggle over extending slavery to new western states and territories demanded that men chose sides. The southern Whigs deserted the party to join the Democrats, who were clearly the party of slavery. The northern Whigs mostly hopped on the American Party on their way to becoming Republicans.

But the core of the Republican Party appears to have evolved from the Free Soil Party. It had grown out of the free soil movement, which stood against extensions of slavery. The failure of the Whigs to take a stand, as a national party, against extending slavery left a political opening which the Free Soil Party filled. They also attracted anti-slavery northern Democrats. An important part of their platform was free homesteads for settlers from federal lands. Their slogan was "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Though they did not, as a party, advocate abolishing slavery in the southern states, their party was closest to an abolitionist view. In 1848 their presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, ran a distant third but received 291,623 votes. They sent two Senators and fourteen Representatives to Congress. In 1852 they ran John P. Hale for president, but received only 155,825 votes. Around 1852 they merged into the Republican Party.

The American Party was formed primarily as an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic group. Its recruits came mostly from the Whig Party, though many Democrats joined as well. Founded as a secret organization, so secret they came to be called "Know Nothings," they did not come out as the American Party until after their great successes in local and congressional elections of 1854. In 1856 Millard Filmore was their presidential candidate, gaining 8974,534 votes, one of the best third-party showings in U.S. history. But they were divided by the slavery issue, and by 1858 most American Party adherents in the north merged into the Republican Party, while in the south they rejoined the Democrats.

Though not a separate party, the abolitionists were an important component in creating the Republican Party. The idea of abolishing slavery was old; it had been declared abolished in Great Britain by the Somerset Decision of 1771, which helped precipitate the American Revolution. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies in 1833 also put Americans on a low moral footing. The debates about extending slavery to the western territories and new states made everyone in America aware of the abolitionist stance.

Steps to Civil War

Five great events mark the U.S.'s progress towards the Civil War: the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, and the election of the first Republican President.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Maine to be admitted to the union as a free state and Missouri to be admitted as a slave state. Most of the remaining Louisiana Territory - actually the land of sovereign native Indian nations - that the nation's leaders planned to annex was declared to be free. It seemed that this would stop the spread of slavery. But the annexation of Texas in 1845 and then northern Mexico (now the U.S.'s southwestern states) in 1848 changed the political equation.

California was the most populous of the conquered lands and applied in 1849 to become a free state. That would give free states a majority in the Senate as well as the House; slavers feared it was the first step to political defeat. A fierce debate ensued in Congress in 1850, with compromise as the result. California was admitted as a free state, but New Mexico and Utah were to decide for themselves if they wanted to allow slavery. In the District of Columbia the slave trade, but not slavery itself, was outlawed. And the most stringent Fugitive Slave Act ever was enacted.

The Fugitive Slave Act was very offensive to citizens in free states. Many people in the northern states who were not set on abolishing slavery in the south felt that if a slave escaped to a free state, they became free. It was a matter of states' rights and people's rights. Many of these citizens were driven into the abolitionist camp by the sight of escaped slaves being re-captured and by the prosecution of those who ran the Underground Railroad. They also lost interest in the Whig Party, which endorsed the Act along with the Democratic Party. This lead to the creation of the Free Soil Party, and eventually to the creation of the Republican Party

Kansas and Nebraska were the next Indian lands to be turned into states; they were to be free states under the Compromise of 1850. But in 1854 Stephen A. Douglas, a leading Democrat, proposed that instead the citizens in those territories be allowed to choose for themselves whether to be free or slave states. The pro-slavery Democrats had the votes to put the plan, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, through. The Whigs and the new American Party did nothing to stop it.

The abolitionists, free soilers, and those who wanted no extensions to slave territories (though they were willing, for the sake of keeping southern states in the Union, to allow slavery to continue where it already existed), needed a new party. They chose not to try to reform the Democrats, Whigs, or American Party. The Republican Party was born alive and kicking in 1854.

But, like the American Party and the Whigs, the Republican Party might have disappeared quickly if it had not been for the ongoing debate (and in Kansas, what amounted to a civil war) over slavery. The final straw that tipped the northern states against the long tradition of Democratic Party power was the Dred Scott Decision. It is important to recall that the American Constitution legalized slavery at the time the British Parliament was debating abolishing the slave trade. It was individual states that outlawed slavery. Since state-rights was an accepted political doctrine until the Civil War, for the most part this going-against the pro-slavery Constitution had been tolerated by the slavers who controlled southern state governments.

Dred Scott hoped that the result of his case would be like the Somerset decision had been in England. It would make clear that stepping onto free soil made you a free man. But the Supreme Court, dominated by Democratic Party appointees, declared that Dred Scott remained the private property of his owners. They went further, implying that no state had the right to deny a citizen the right to put his private property, including slaves, anywhere he saw fit. The Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1857. Republican Party candidates for local office and the House of Representatives dominated the elections in northern states in 1858.

Presidential Elections of 1856 and 1860

In 1856 the Republican Party overtook the Whig Party to become the great rival of the Democratic Party. But it was not simply a reformed and renamed Whig Party. The Whigs had been a national party; the Republicans were almost all in the non-slave states. The Whig Party had been political largely in the sense that it was a grouping of people who sought government offices; the Republican Party was a party of principles, a party that took positions on a variety of issues and promised to change the laws of the land in fundamental ways.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan for president in 1856. The Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who used the "free soil, free labor, free speech, free men" slogan for his campaign. The American Party and the Whigs both nominated ex-president Millard Fillmore. Buchanan won well less than half the popular vote, but took a large majority in the Electoral Collage (1,838,169 and 174). Fremont received the second largest number of citizen votes and votes in the Electoral College (1,341, 264 and 114). Fillmore placed third with a substantial number of popular votes but won only Maryland (874,534 and 8).

The congressional elections of 1858 were heavily influenced by popular reaction to the Dred Scott decision. The American Party and Whigs continued their declines. The Democrats, though still a national party, were increasingly identified with slavery. The Republicans continued to strengthen their role in free-state politics.

The presidential election of 1860 is one of the most interesting in American history. The Whig-American-Republican grouping had lost the presidency in 1856 because their vote was divided. Yet the Democrats divided their vote in 1860. The reason was simple: the voters had become passionate about the issue of slavery. In fact, with slavers fighting anti-slavery militias in Kansas, and John Brown having conducted his anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, they were doing more than just voting about the issue. The Republicans were all against slavery, though a large majority of the party were willing to allow it to continue to exist in the southern slave states if its expansion was stopped and slaves became free when they stepped on free state soil (reversing the Dred Scott decision). The Democrats divided into two factions, basically southern and northern factions. Stephen Douglas was the mainstream, northern Democrat; his position was to let each state decide whether to allow slavery or not. That was not good enough for the more radical slave masters, who nominated John Breckinridge on a platform of extending slavery. The remnants of the southern Whig and American parties merged into yet another party, the Constitutional Union Party. Nominating John Bell, they emphasized the need to preserve the union, going to great lengths to take no stand on slavery or its extension.

While the Constitutional Union Party candidate split off some votes that might otherwise have gone to Lincoln, the Democrat vote was much more closely divided. As a result, though he only received 40% of the popular vote (1,866,452), Abraham Lincoln received 180 Electoral College votes, compared to 123 total for the other 3 candidates. All of Lincoln's Electoral College votes came from free states, that is, from northern states plus California and Oregon.

Civil War

Passion often makes for bad judgment, and the slavers proceeded to make a series of mistakes that forced Lincoln and the Republicans to abolish slavery.

When 1861 dawned, with Lincoln soon to be inaugurated, the slavers actually still held the political upper hand. The majority of Supreme Court justices were pro-slavery. Republicans did not have a majority in either house of Congress. To abolish slavery would require a constitutional amendment, which could be blocked by one-quarter of the states; slavers controlled almost one half of the states.

Yet before Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated on March 4, 1861, 7 states announced they had seceded from the U.S. They joined together as the Confederate States of America, under the leadership of a leading member of the Democratic Party, Jefferson Davis.

Aside from the slavery issue, leading southern businessmen and politicians feared the Republicans for another reason. Some Republican politicians, including Lincoln, a former lawyer for the railroads, were backed by northern businessmen, in particular the owners of railroad and manufacturing corporations. Cotton growers feared higher protective tariffs on imported manufactured goods; the south was already deeply indebted to northern bankers and merchants.

Another mistake of the southerners was not taking the matter to the Supreme Court. It is very possible that the Supreme Court, with 5 southern members on it, would have ruled that states have a right to secede. But to admit that the Supreme Court had any jurisdiction over them was as galling to the southern secessionists as it was to the northern abolitionists who evaded the Fugitive Slave laws and Dred Scott ruling.

Not content to rule over a greatly diminished United States, the Republican Party and others who opposed secession (many northern Democrats were pro-slavery but anti-secession) forced a civil war upon the nation. There were two important effects of the Civil War upon the Republican Party (aside from the lasting effects of winning the war).

First, it became the party of Big Government and high taxes. It favored a centralized national government over state and local governance. The Republican war effort required high taxes to pay for men and their supplies, and that supported the industrialization process that went along with war. It became closely tied to northern manufacturing interests, which included a greatly enlarged class of millionaires created by war profiteering. Second, it took on the virtuous role of favoring the abolition of slavery and the improvement of the lives of economically deprived citizens, both Negro and those of European descent. This role is highlighted by the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided free land to western settlers.

These two roles corresponded to two ‘wings" of the party, the moderate wing and the Radical Republicans.

It was the Radical Republicans who supported the Confiscation Act (freeing the slaves of soldiers fighting the union), the Emancipation Proclamation, which was intended to abolish slavery in the confederate states, and the 13th Amendment, which did abolish slavery in the re-united states. They also pushed for the established the Freedmen's Bureau.

The Negro Wing of the Republican Party

In order to remain President in a war-weary nation, in the 1864 contest the Republicans had combined with pro-union, pro-war Democrats into the Union Party. Lincoln had taken Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his Vice-Presidential running mate. When Lincoln was assassinated the country suddenly had a Democrat for president and a Republican Congress led by the Radical Republicans. They denied the now-defeated southern former-slavers the right to sit in Congress; set up the Committee on Reconstruction to rule the southern states; and fought with President Johnson to the point of attempting to impeach him.

In 1866 and 1868 Negro voters helped elect Republican congresses and a new Republican President, Ulysses S. Grant. Radical Republican control of Congress resulted in all male Americans, regardless of their origins or skin color, receiving the right to vote upon passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. The former slave states also remained under military occupation until new state constitutions, written to the liking of Radical Republicans, were in place.

White southerners, with few exceptions, became even more solidly identified with the Democratic Party. Many could not run for office or vote because of their records as traitors. Freed slaves, with few exceptions, joined the Republican Party, giving it a presence in the south for the first time. Many Negroes were elected to local and state offices. For the ex-slavers the situation was intolerable, and the solution was terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist wing of the southern Democratic Party. In locality after locality, then state after state, former slaves were scared away from voting, and then from even being registered to vote. Until the Great Depression most black Americans would be Republicans; in the South they would constitute most of the Republican Party. However, after 1876 few black Americans were able to vote in the southern states. As a result black politicians could not be elected to office; in the South no Republicans could be elected to office at all; and the influence of blacks within the national party was minimal.

Wall Street Republicans

Starting with the civil war and accelerating into the 20th century the United States economy was rapidly industrialized. Even the agricultural economy was being mechanized, so that fewer people's labor sufficed to grow and harvest bountiful crops of wheat and corn. Displaced farmers migrated to the towns and cities. Even food came to be processed in great factories. Corporations were the main form of organization of the large-scale business that grew during this period. Much of politics of the era consisted of struggles between the wealthy, who owned stock in the corporations, and those who labored for wages, ran smaller businesses, or continued to farm on a small scale. Since the Republican Party both dominated the national government and dominated the northern state governments where manufacturing was concentrated, controlling the party was important to the men of great wealth. By using their wealth to support the campaigns of politicians, who in turn used all their power to help their donors, wealthy Americans came to dominate the Republican Party. Radical Republicans lost elections to business-sponsored candidates, and the business of the Republican Party came to be protecting corporate interests. After this point we may refer to the controlling elite of the Republican Party as Wall Street Republicans.

In 1872 a group of anti-corruption minded Republicans formed the Liberal Republican party and nominated newspaper editor Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate. The Democrats, eager to rebuild their party, decided to nominate Greeley as well. But with Grant still a war hero, the Democrats still the party of treason, and many black Americans still able to vote, it was any easy victory for Grant. Two demands of the Liberal Republicans were adopted by the mainstream Republicans. Except for 500 ex-confederate leaders, former rebels had their voting rights, and their right to run for office, restored. Civil service reform was also attempted.

The Presidential election of 1876 provides a good view of the changing social and political landscape. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes. The Klan had done its job: the Democrats swept the southern states excepting two remaining under military governance, South Carolina and Louisiana, plus Florida, then a sparsely populated state with only 4 electoral votes. The winner was disputed in those three states. After much bargaining Hayes was given the Presidency, but only after he promised to pull the remaining federal troops out of the South and, effectively, to do nothing about the disenfranchisement of black voters by the Democratic Party.

Despite more charges of corruption and economic hard times, the Republicans were able to hold onto majorities in Congress until the mid-term elections of 1882. The Democrat's combination of having a Protestant, white-racist wing in the south and a Catholic, immigrant-based, urban wing in the North, was proving to be too powerful for the Republicans. In 1884 the Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland in another close election. But for wealthy men and their corporations, this was not a problem; they controlled both parties quite effectively. The Supreme Court was filled with former corporate lawyers; it could be relied on to overrule state legislature or even a Congress that went against corporate wishes. With both parties dominated by business, a new movement arose. The Farmers Alliance, the Populist Party, labor unions, anarchism, and socialism all were important components of American politics in the late 1880's.

It is important to note that the average Republican voter of the era was not rich, corrupt, or mean-spirited. Most Republicans were farmers, tradesmen, or factory workers who had fought with the Union during the Civil War. They believed in hard work and honest business dealings; they were assets to their communities. Often they voted Republican because the only other choice was to vote Democrat. When offered an honest politician to vote for, or a Progressive Republican candidate, they usually availed themselves to the opportunity. Corporate domination of the Republican Party was carried out in backrooms and by creating a party machine that would see that corporate-friendly candidates were nominated.

Sugar, Hanna, McKinley and War

Many businessmen had great influence in politics at the end of the 19th century, but most were content with high tariffs (customs taxes on imported manufactured goods) and freedom from regulations. The Sugar Trust, however, took control of United States politics for profit to a new level: it required war, and it got war.

A prelude to the main show was provided by Hawaii, where a treaty had granted U.S. rights to a naval base in Pearl harbor in 1887. In 1893, aided by U.S. troops, American sugar cane growers overthrew the native government and asked for Hawaii to be annexed to the United States. But by the time a bill for that was ready in the U.S. Senate, Grover Cleveland had been elected President. He sent a commission to Hawaii that found most Hawaiians wanted to remain independent. No further action was taken until after a much bigger sugar fight.

Sugar magnate Henry Havemeyer had a few problems even after he became fabulously rich and the controlling person in the Sugar Trust. His factories turned raw cane sugar into the crystal white powder that had been a mainstay of world trade for centuries. Not only was very little sugar cane grown in the U.S. (mostly in Louisiana), but some U.S. farmers wanted to grow and refine sugar beets to compete with cane. What the Sugar Trust needed was cheap, untaxed imports of raw sugar, but very high tariffs on competing imported refined sugar. Congress was willing to go along (Havemeyer had perfected the stock-tip bribe: Senators could get rich quick by simply buying and selling sugar trust stock on Havemeyer's instructions) on the high tariffs for imported refined sugar, but Louisiana Senators vigorously opposed low tariffs on raw sugar.

Various interests in the U.S. had long coveted Cuba and other islands in Spain's American empire. Havemeyer determined to buy himself a President and a war. While it is well known that Mark Hanna raised vast sums of money to insure William McKinley triumphed over Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 Presidential election, the role of the Sugar Trust in that election has been overlooked. McKinley owed Havemeyer a war; many American expansionists like Theodore Roosevelt wanted a war anyway. Delay was necessary only because Havemeyer needed to have Citibank buy up sugar plantations in Cuba and Puerto Rico that would become vastly more valuable after the war. Forget the explosion of the Maine: America was going to war regardless. McKinley made demands of the Spanish, had them met fully, and then made even more aggressive demands that no nation would find acceptable.

On April 11, 1898 McKinley asked Congress to declare war, and Democrats and Republicans alike were happy to do it. Spain had already lost the Philippines, excepting Manila, to native rebels, and was barely holding its own against Cuban rebels. On August 12, 1998, the Spanish signed an armistice. 500 Americans had died in battle, while 5000 had died of tropical diseases.

In the Philippines the defeat of the Spanish started an even greater war: one against the Filipino people themselves. They fought guerrilla style; probably 1,000,000 died, many of them civilians; and 4,324 American soldiers were killed. In 1901 the Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured. Most sugar plantations had new American owners. In 1942 the Japanese "liberated" the Philippines from the United States; in 1946, after driving out the Japanese, the U.S. finally allowed the Philippines to become an independent nation.

Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives

The heritage of the Radical and Liberal Republicans was partly buried by the rise of the powerful, corporate and increasingly conservative business wing of the party. But the same economic, technical and cultural changes that affected the entire nation affected the ordinary Republican citizens who often had much input into local politics even when corrupt men occupied higher office.

As the 20th century dawned the reform movement became a tidal wave. A number of streams of citizens' demands came together and fed into each other. Even some demands of socialists gained an audience among Republicans who had felt the brunt of the predatory tactics of the gigantic business corporations. Writers, including the muckrakers, novelists writing books like Frank Norris's The Octopus about Republican farmers being crushed by Republican railroad barons, and non-fiction like Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, had a notable influence on the Republican faithful. The financial panic of 1907 also undermined people's belief in the infallibility of the free market.

Anger at the patent drug industry, the alcohol industry, and the food industry was widespread. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, had become President in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated. Though he had been a promoter of the Spanish-American and then the Philippine-American wars, and was from a very wealthy family, Roosevelt had shown concern for the plight of the poor when serving as New York police commissioner. During Roosevelt's presidency the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed in 1906. The conservation on national forests had started under Republican President Harrison in 1891; but Roosevelt pushed hard on this issue. He placed some 125 million acres in federal reserves, about 3 times the total of all of his predecessors.

While the reformers, known as the Progressive Movement, could be found in both political parties (and in third parties), they had more influence, during this period, in the Republican Party. In addition to Roosevelt, well-known Progressive Republicans included governor Robert ("Fighting Bob") La Follette of Wisconsin, California's governor Hiram Johnson, and governor Charles Evans Hughs of New York State. Issues like getting the right of women to vote cut across party lines, with suffragettes in Republican states working within the Republican Party.

In 1911 the National Progressive Republican league was formed to oust President Taft and get a progressive in the White House. Roosevelt decided to head the progressives and won most of the Republican primaries in 1912. But Taft controlled a majority of delegates to the nominating convention and received the nomination.

The Progressives thought Teddy could beat both the Republicans and the Democrats, so they split and formed the Progressive Party. The Democrats nominated the racist, but otherwise posing as progressive, Woodrow Wilson. Of course Wilson won and the Republicans would not regain the Presidency until 1920.

Roaring Back in the 20's

The 1920's were a critical period for the Republican Party. While the party would contain a progressive or liberal wing until the 1970's, during the 1920's the Wall Street wing gained an ascendency which it never lost. Partly this was because of President Wilson's performance in office, which led to a landslide in 1920 for Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding over Democrat nominee James M. Cox. It was the first presidential election in which women could vote, and they voted Republican.

After a postwar recession the American economy continued the process of rapid industrialization. The European industrial powers had worn themselves out, but America had entered the war only after selling them vast amounts of arms and food. Because the U.S. had spent relatively little on the war, its taxes were relatively low, and manufacturers had a global competitive advantage. Harding appointed men who believed businesses needed no regulation to the agencies that were supposed to regulate business. An ardent anti-conservationist, Albert Fall, was appointed Secretary of Interior.

At the same time businessmen were terrified of the Communist revolution that had taken place in Russia (with failed attempts in several other countries). Conservative groups labeled anyone demanding any reform a communist. Of course there were actual communists, belonging to the American Communist Party, which took orders from Moscow, but most progressives wanted reforms through democratic change, not a dictatorship created by a bloody revolution.

While the economy grew, the stock market ran wild. Taxes on the rich were reduced by two-thirds by the sympathetic Republican Congress. Tariff's on imported goods were greatly increased, supporting prices American manufacturers could charge at the expense of farmers and consumers. Scandals were plentiful, notably the Teapot Dome scandal. Meanwhile organized businessmen made black-market profits selling alcohol to the thirsty, a business made possible by the passage of the Prohibition amendment in 1919.

Harding died in office of natural causes and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. Republicans had another fling with Progressive ideas in the 1924 election, when some split again from the main party and nominated Bob La Follette for President. Calvin Coolidge led the main party ticket. The Democrats nominated a conservative Wall Street lawyer, John W. Davis. This time the Republican split did not prevent a Republican landslide. But Cal only served one term. The Republican nominee in 1928 was Herbert Hoover.

It is difficult to imagine now how popular Herbert Hoover was in 1928. He and the Republicans were so popular it looked as if the Democratic Party might cease to exist. He had become famous during World War I for getting food to the starving in Belgium. He had a good record as Secretary of Commerce; a little too good for the crooked politicians and their businessmen friends. The Democrats nominated Al Smith, who was devoted to making alcohol legal again. That and his Catholicism made him unpopular even in the "solid South" where the Klan, the backbone of the Democratic Party, was almost as anti-Catholic as it was anti-Negro.

Hoover received 21,391,381 votes to Smith's 15,016,443. Smith carried only the 5 solidest states of the Solid South. Hoover was sworn in as President on March 4, 1929. No one knew it then, but the stock market had already peaked.

The Great Depression and a Half-century in the Minority

The exodus of farmers, especially tenant farmers and laborers, for factory jobs continued during the 1920s. Agriculture had not prospered with the rest of the economy during the 1920's. Hoover tried to help by signing the Agricultural Marketing Act in June of 1929. It established a Farm Board that hoped to raise prices of agricultural products. But farmer's unsold surpluses were so large that it never achieved its goals.

By October of 1929 the stock market was down noticeably, though the economy itself was still going strong. Savvy investors like Joseph Kennedy were selling their stocks for cash. Confidence in quick paper stock profits began to wain, and then everyone wanted the paper profits they had accumulated in the 1920's converted to cash on the same day, October 29, 1929. Many speculators had borrowed money to play the market; they were forced to sell their stocks to cover the debts in their margin accounts.

The beloved free-market religion of the most ardent business Republican's had failed (the truest believers blamed the failure on government meddling, the very Devil in their world view). Suddenly realizing they were much poorer, stock speculators cut back on spending. Banks, panicking, called in loans. Demand for goods and services fell, businesses laid off workers, and consumption fell even further.

Herbert Hoover was President when it happened, and Herbert Hoover continued as President until the beginning of 1933. Though Hoover tried various measures, often Congress failed to support him (Republicans because they did not believe in government meddling in business, Democrats because they were delighted to see the nation blame Republicans for the problems). Among the measures tried by Hoover were public projects like the Boulder Dam, creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Norris-La Guardia Act that essentially legalized organizing labor unions.

The Democrats won the Congressional (and state and local) elections of 1930, then the Presidency in 1932. In a few short years the Republicans had gone from being the majority party to the minority party.

It is important to note that progressive "liberal" Republicans gained many important positions, notably in Congress, during the Depression years. Many of the acts that are now associated with the Democratic Party, such as Social Security, were in fact passed with broad support from both parties.

Not only would the "business" wing of the Republican Party need decades to see their party have an equal footing with the Democrats, but they would have to work together with a liberal/Progressive wing that had far more influence inside the party.

Towards the end of World War II and during Truman's presidency in particular the Republican Party gained mainly through some voters' irritation at the party in power. In 1946, for instance, the Republicans briefly had a majority in Congress. This success was capped with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President in 1952. But the former WWII commander was much more popular than the party he headed. Eisenhower won by a landslide, but the Republicans barely managed majorities in Congress. An important change took place in the South, however. Florida, Texas and Tennessee went for Eisenhower; the Republican Party began to acquire the southern constituency it would turn to for success after the 1960's.

Eisenhower's Republicans were content to undo what they saw as the most excessive New Deal legacies, such as wage and price controls, but left such programs as Social Security intact. They favored less government-held electricity creation and allowed corporations to begin building nuclear power plants. The economy was again expanding of its own accord, pumped up by a rising birth rate (the baby boom), exports (again, Europe lay prostrate), and pent-up demand from WWII and Korean War era rationing. America still liked Ike in 1956, but the Democrats still held their own in Congress.

Richard Nixon was Ike's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1956 and played an important role within the administration. He was fiercely patriotic and anti-communist, but also adamant that black Americans in the South should be treated as full citizens. In 1954 the Supreme Court, mainly appointed during the New Deal years, declared segregated (by race) schools to be illegal, even if the schools were truly "separate but equal." Southern Democrats and the Klan opposed, sometimes with violence, the integration of southern public schools. In one incident Eisenhower, at Nixon's urging, had to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Democratic governor Faubus tried to prevent the enrollment of "Negro" (the term used in that era) children. The Civil Rights bill of 1957, the first since Reconstruction, was passed with support from Republicans and northern Democrats.

In 1960, allegedly using massive fraud in Illinois, the Democrats won back the presidency by a hair. During the 1960's the Republicans struggled to remain relevant. Blacks enrolling to vote in the formerly segregated southern states forgot that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and the Democrats were the party of Lynching. African-Americans would be the most reliable component of the Democratic party for the remaining decades of the 20th century, and they tipped the scales strongly against the Republicans.

Nixon and Revival

After Vice-President Richard Nixon lost his bid for the Presidency in 1960, what then passed as the ultra-conservative wing gained control of the party. They nominated Barry Goldwater for President in 1964; Lyndon Johnson, who had become President after Kennedy was assassinated, crushed Goldwater in the polls. But Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident and involved the U.S. in a new land war in Asia, in Vietnam. He lost the support of anti-war Democrats, then decided not to run in 1968.

The Republicans next moved back to a centrist, Richard M. Nixon, for their Presidential nominee. The Democrats nominated another centrist, Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President. The Democrats under Johnson had extended the New Deal to include what were called Great Society social welfare programs, also known as the War on Poverty. Nixon held to the traditional Republican belief that the only viable way out of poverty was hard work; programs appropriate in a Great Depression were not needed in the booming economy of 1960's America. Enough working class and middle class Americans agreed with him to elect him President. But the country was still Democratic; both houses of Congress had Democratic majorities, so Nixon had to gain some votes from Democratic congressmen to get his ideas enacted.

Richard Nixon had several remarkable achievements in office. In foreign policy Nixon recognized that Communism was not monolithic. By forging an alliance with Communist China he accelerated the breakup of the communist block countries and helped China regain its status as a great civilization. In domestic policy Nixon realized that the world had changed and that certain reforms had to be put into place to deal with those changes. Notably he signed into law the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In politics Nixon was able to see how the Republican Party might become a majority party again. As the more conservative of the two parties, and in particular the party favoring more individual initiative and less taxes, it was natural that it should find a way to break up the Democratic Party's monopoly in the southern states. The 1972 presidential election would demonstrate that strategy could work.

The War in Vietnam was the biggest issue in the 1972 election. The Democrats nominated George McGovern, who wished to withdraw from Vietnam and was very much in favor of extending New Deal and Great Society programs. The more conservative Democratic Party bosses, though temporarily unable to boss the grassroots around, nevertheless undermined McGovern's campaign. The new black voters for McGovern were counter-weighted by white, conservative, working and middle-class voters, especially in the south, voting Republican for the first time. Nixon won every state but Massachusetts, but the Democrats still held control of Congress.

There may have been an element of racism in the South when white voters began voting for Republican candidates, and later even changed their party registration. After all, blacks were now Democrats. But the main reason white voters switched was because most had little desire, themselves, for social welfare programs. Religion played a role too; the Republican Party was traditionally Protestant, as were white southern voters. These southern voters were also very anti-communist; the Democrats, and McGovern in particular, appeared to be soft on Communism.

But Richard Nixon had made a serious error in judgment on two points. Despite his great achievements, Watergate and the Vietnam War would destroy his reputation. In Vietnam he underestimated how badly the Vietnamese wanted to be free from American domination. No matter how much he threatened, no matter what horrible weapons he unleashed on the people of Vietnam, they continued to fight. Expanding the war into Cambodia backfired, strengthening the Cambodian Communists. Finally Nixon had to negotiate a withdrawal of American troops; after a face-saving period of time, the Communists took control of all of Vietnam. As a result Nixon lost the support of the militarists, who blamed him for losing a war, and of the pacifists, who blamed him for prosecuting it before losing it.

His second great error was unleashing his "dirty tricks" team on the Democrats. In retrospect he would have won the 1972 election easily by simply running an honest campaign. But the dirty-tricks gang was caught burglering the offices of the Democrats in the Watergate Hotel. Nixon tried to cover up his role in the affair, but a committee of Congress kept investigating until Nixon was compelled to resign to avoid impeachment. Since Vice-President Agnew had resigned due to a scandal in 1973, the new Vice-President, Gerald Ford, became the new President of the United States.

The Watergate scandal and disillusionment after the loss of the war in Vietnam temporarily stopped the Republican party's growth. Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon a pardon, but the voters would not pardon Gerald when he ran for President in 1976. The Democrats, worried about their eroding base in the South, nominated a moderate Georgia former governor, Jimmy Carter, and regained the White House.

Reagan and Resurgence

But in the 1976, 1978, and 1980 elections the tendency of the country to realign around the parties on a new basis continued, with the results most visible in the south, where many formerly Democratic voters and elected politicians switched to being Republicans. The conservative wing of the Democratic party was weakened by these defections to the Republicans.

Since the Great Depression the only way the Republicans had been able to get a President elected was by choosing a moderate candidate like Eisenhower or Nixon. That was about to change. The Goldwater Republicans had never given up. As memories of the Depression evaporated, and the results of the 60's drug culture became apparent, their appeal to conservative values and free-market ideology gained ground in the party and with voters. Republicans nominated ultra-conservative former movie actor (and former Governor of California) Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. Jimmy Carter ran for a second term. His defeat is usually attributed to an economic recession, post-Vietnam bad feelings, and the fall of an American puppet, the Shaw of Iran. During the election campaign the revolutionaries in Iran held U.S. consulate members hostage. Carter appeared to be weak and ineffective in dealing with the situation.

From 1932 until 1980 American politics were dominated by the Democratic Party and the idea that the main purpose of government is social welfare and economic expansion through increasing the incomes (and spending) of the working class. Since 1980 (up until this essay is being written in 2005) politics has been dominated by the Republican Party and the idea that the main purposes of government is providing order and economic expansion through increasing the profits of business enterprises. Generally, voters have been happy with economic expansion no matter what the cause (and unhappy with stagnation or decline).

It was called the Reagan Revolution but in fact the Reagan era kept most of the New Deal and Great Society programs, though some were scaled back. It was in foreign policy that Reagan made the most dramatic changes. He escalated the cold war, not by an actual attack, but by increasing military spending to a degree that the Communist block countries could not match. He also found methods, some of them of questionable legality, to undermine socialist and left wing governments, in particular that of Nicaragua. These strategies cumulated (after Reagan left office) in the breaking away of the Eastern European states from Soviet dominance starting with Poland. A regime change in Russia and the breakup of the Soviet union followed.

While domestic policies ended the Reagan era little changed, the positive experience of having an expanding economy and victory over communism greatly strengthened not only the credibility of the Republican Party with American voters, but also the dominance of the conservative wing within the Republican Party.

The Christian Right and Newt Gingrich

In 1988 in the Republican presidential primaries television evangelist Pat Robertson began as a strong contender but withdrew from the race after his claim to have been in combat as a marine in the Korean War was shown to be false. George Bush, Reagan's Vice-President, became the Republican nominee and then President of the United States. He one-term presidency was characterized by a war against Iraq following the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, an oil-rich kingdom on the Persian Gulf.

Despite its Presidential victories in 1980, 1984, and 1988, the Republican Party was still far behind the Democrats in registered voters. To the extent that the two parties were a reflection of economic classes (with a majority of welfare and working class families registered Democrat, a majority of upper-middle and upper class families registered Republican, and the lower-middle to middle-middle class up for grabs), the Republicans were in a corner. Pressing policies like deregulation, lower corporate taxes, and a lower inheritance tax, all highly desired by the dominant Wall Street clique within the party, might have eroded what support they did have among the less wealthy voters.

It was clear to party strategists, which is to say Wall Street Republicans, that they needed to find a way to get votes from people whose economic needs they did not serve. Their success in breaking up the Solid South, the bastion of the Democratic Party until the 1970s, pointed the way. They would take advantage of non-economic, cultural issues to bring into the Party a huge group of voters who were not motivated, or not very motivated, by Republican economic policies.

The target group was fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. Though found everywhere in the nation, these individuals were most prevalent in the former Confederate states. They included some, but not all, Southern Baptists. Politically they had often been apathetic, with low voter turn outs for elections. But that was changing. A set of issues was chosen that would appeal to them, and with the financial backing of Wall Street republicans, a new set of political and religious leaders emerged. Pat Robertson has already been mentioned; other leaders included Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority, and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. The issues that mobilized this movement were demands to make abortions (and even birth control) illegal; to allow or enforce prayer in public schools; and to make the Bible a basis for law.

While this new Religious Right, as it was called, helped elect President Bush in 1988, the alliance was insufficient to give him a victory in 1992. For eight years Democrat Bill Clinton would sit in the White House, but he was under siege from the Republicans, who gained majorities in the House of Representatives starting in 1994. This was the heyday of radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who managed to direct people's anger against Bill Clinton, his first lady, Hillary, and all things "Liberal." Rush's show, spiked with humor at Democrats' expense, was the most popular show on radio. The Republican representatives in Congress were led by Newt Gingrich, who in the 1994 campaigns introduced the Contract with America. This avoided some big, divisive issues like school prayer and gun control. Instead it focused on reforming how Congress operated, tax cuts, tort (lawsuit) reform, and welfare reform (decreasing payments and eligibility).

Moments of Triumph: George W. Bush and the 2000 and 2004 elections

Despite having, or perhaps because of having, Bill Clinton in the White House, the period between 1992 and 2000 saw solid gains for the Republicans in Congress and at the local level. Focusing on cultural issues and promises to cut taxes was paying off.

The Democrats nominated Bill Clinton's Vice-President, Al Gore, for the Presidency in 2000. After a fierce primary struggle George W. Bush, one of the sons of former President George Bush and recently governor of Texas, won the Republican nomination. The Bush family had ties to Wall Street and in particular the petrochemical industry, but so did the Gore family. With little to distinguish the two candidates, and with the Christian Right as campaign foot soldiers, George W. Bush squeaked to a victory. The election was so close that a dispute arose over who had won in the state of Florida, where Jeb Bush, George's brother, was governor. Whoever won in the state would receive its Electoral College votes and win the Presidency. After a lengthy legal dispute the Supreme Court of the United States, voting 5 to 4 on strictly partisan lines, decided in Bush's favor.

With many American's wondering if George W. Bush had fairly won the election, Bush set about his agenda. The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court; it was the first time since 1928 that Republicans controlled all the branches of government. Before President Bush could do much to implement his agenda, however, the Al Quada attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took place on September 1, 2001. The stock market, overheated because the Federal Reserve had kept interest rates too low during the boom (sometimes called the Internet Bubble) of the late 1990's, plummeted, and the rest of the economy quickly followed.

The Republicans had come to be in charge just in time for another disaster that might make them look like Herbert Hoovers and lead to decades of Democratic Party rule. But George W. Bush was no Hoover. He responded vigorously to the Al Quada attack by invading Afghanistan. He secured a future supply of oil for the United States by invading Iraq after falsely claiming Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Rather than increasing social programs to help the country out of the recession, he pushed through tax cuts (that had been planned by Republicans for decades) that favored large businesses, heirs to fortunes, upper-middle class and upper class Americans. While this created a huge federal deficit, it did help revive the economy when combined with the Federal Reserve's lowering of interest rates.

The American voters rewarded George W. Bush and the Republicans by returning them to office in the 2004 elections (Bush's own victory was narrow; he received 62 million votes to Democrat John Kerry's 59 million). This is particularly remarkable given the both the poor performance of the American economy during his first term and the deterioration of employee and small business incomes. Many of the better paying jobs were moved overseas, and the destruction of small, independently owned retailers was particularly fast in this period.

At the time of the writing of this pamphlet, George W. Bush is President of the United States, the Republicans control a majority of the states, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Agree with them or not, that is a major accomplishment for a political party.

At the same time, the Wall Street Republicans appear to be losing control of the party to the religious Republicans. So far the religious Republicans have supported the Wall Street program of reducing taxes on the rich (the capital gains tax, dividend tax, estate tax, and upper-income bracket taxes). But the anger of lower-class Republican voters is fueled as much by economic failure as by cultural values. There is a great potential for backlash against Wall Street, which was given its wish-list. In contrast the promises to make the cultural changes that motivated lower-class citizens to vote with the Republicans have not been met.

The triumph of the religious Republicans within the party might jeopardize the allegiance of the moderate Republicans who are not homosexual bashers or believers in the rapture; who might actually believe that women have a right to contraceptives, abortion, and divorce; or who realize that the same science that makes NASCAR racers run and allows people to watch the races on TV also is absolutely certain that species evolved through mutations and natural selection. Just as American's demanded Prohibition and then revolted against it when they got it, actually banning abortion, contraception, and divorce; forcing every child in America to pray in school from the Evangelical prayer-book; and returning the TV to a 1950's-style sexual innocence, would almost certainly drive voters to elect less puritanical politicians. Which party might come out ahead in that backlash would depend on how the various parties position themselves.

Dude do you think anyone is going to read all that crap.

On The Daily Run Down clip, the quote says "How will Ryan defend his record". What, Gaffe Biden and Obama's record are indefenceable and Ryan has to worry about his record. BIAS! The better headline would be " Ryan has easy target in Obama's record".

WHY DOES PAUL RYAN HATE WOMEN AND SENIORS? RYAN WANTS TO TAKE AWAY WOMEN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE FOR THEMSELVES ON HEALTHCARE ISSUES, KILLING PLANNED PARENTHOOD WITH ROMNEY!

WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE SENIORS? Seniors vote to protect their Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Post Office. Repubs want to privatize it all for greedy profit!

WHY DO THEY CREATE VOTER SUPPRESSION LAWS TO STOP THE ELEDELY FROM VOTING? WHY HASN'T PAUL RYAN SPOKE OUT AGAINST VOTER SUPPRESION LAWS?

Seniors vote to protect their Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Post Office. Repubs want to privatize it all for greedy profit! Romney and Ryan want to kill those programs for their greedy rich friends who want part of that action!

Vote President Obama/Biden and Team Democratic Parfty 2012, protect the elderly and your selveves from the greedy rich!

And this is this same @!$%# you where talking wast week,The only Joe will win this debate is he has to keep his mounth shut and that wont happen

Dont worry tomorrow you guys can call Ryan a liar.

A middle class person voting republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

OK, so all of the Obama people think that Biden is great and Biden's going to win. Big surprise. All I know is that any campaign that is relying on Joe Biden to save the bacon, is in big trouble. They are asking Biden to do what Obama could not do - to justify Obama's term as president, and to offer rationale for a second term. If all Biden does is try to talk about how terrible Romney is, he's toast.

Thursday, Aug 30, 2012 07:22 AM PDT

Paul Ryan: The definitive fact-check

www.salon.com

A comprehensive guide to the candidate's lies or misrepresentations from his big RNC speech

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Paul Ryan delivered a blistering assessment of President Obama aided by a casual disregard for facts. Many, including Salon's Joan Walsh and Steve Kornacki, have already pointed out the speech's mendacity, but here is a comprehensive guide of every single lie, misrepresentation or omission from the speech, in the order they were delivered:

• GM plant — Ryan: blamed Obama for the closing of GM plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wis. Truth: One of the biggest whoppers of the night; the plant closed before Obama was even sworn into office. His position also contradicts the Republicans' position of opposing President Obama's auto rescue.

• Stimulus — Ryan: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal." Truth: The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the stimulus created 3.3 million jobs. Four out of five economists agree. Ryan himself wrote letters requesting stimulus money, then lied about it.

• Medicare — Ryan: "Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama." Truth: As we've pointed out many times, Obamacare doesn't raid Medicare and Ryan's plan would do a lot more to ruin Medicare. One of the biggest lies of the campaign.

• Obamacare — Ryan: "You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover…" Truth: Politifact called the "government takeover" of healthcare meme their "lie of the year" in 2010.

• Jobs — Ryan: "We have a plan for a stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years." Truth: An almost impossible goal.

• Debt — Ryan: "The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government." Truth: A false choice. There is no evidence suggesting that decreasing the size of government would grow the economy; in fact, it may hurt by killing government and contractor jobs. And much of the debt is due to Bush policies that Ryan voted for, like the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Simpson-Bowles commission — Ryan: "He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing." Truth: Ryan sat on that commission, and, as chairman of the Budget Committee was a leader on it. He voted against the commission's recommendations, bringing all the other Republicans along with him.

• Credit downgrade — Ryan: Obama "began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America." When Standard & Poors downgraded the country's sovereign debt rating in 2011, they said that it was because Republican lawmakers had taken the nation's debt ceiling hostage (something Ryan supported doing) and because "the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues" (another position Ryan maintains).

• Poor — Ryan: "We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak." Truth: About two-thirds of the cuts in Ryan's budget proposal come from programs the benefit poor people, such as food stamps. Meanwhile, he calls for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Everyone lies. Ryan takes it to new levels.

UPDATE: Paul Ryan's challenger, Democrat Rob Zerban, called Ryan a "liar" for his speech. "From lying about an auto plant closure that happened under George W. Bush to concealing the truth about his radical plot to kill Medicare, Ryan showed his true interest was not in solving real problems, but advancing his own career," he said in a statement.

Why do democrats hate America? The worst president in record and they still try and push him on America.

Why do democrats hate babies? Abortion stops a life period. The choice is before sex, not after.

Why are Democrats raciest? Why do they want an entire races of people to be beholden to them? Why do they tell them they can't survive without the, looking out for them. Why do they want people dumb except so they have a block of votes.

Why do Democrats think they are smart when all they talk about is idiotic things that do not help anyone except themselves?

Why do Democrats hate God? They worship false idols and prophets and believe the only way to tolerance is through intolerance.

Just a few reasons why DNC stand for Dumb nuts coalition.

When faced with facts they know not what it is and call it lies. An actual plan has to be a lie. We have not seen one in four years so it has to be a lie.

Starsailing

You are gopped up on goop! Your ship is lost at sea and sinking fast! Deflect from Obamas Bin Lying record!

NO MORE YEARS! End of an ERROR!

Here are some things joe is not allowed to say tonight...

Biden is not allowed to use any “slavery”reference in the debates, like he did in August.

“Look at what they [Republicans] value, and look at their budget. And look what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They‘re going to put y’all back in chains.” –Joe Biden, speaking to a largely African-American audience in Danville, Va., Aug. 14, 2012

Race relations, Biden is not allowed to use any “slavery”reference in the debates, like he did in August.

“Look at what they [Republicans] value, and look at their budget. And look what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They‘re going to put y’all back in chains.” –Joe Biden, speaking to a largely African-American audience in Danville, Va., Aug. 14, 2012

Count and spell, These things can get confusing.

“Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.” –Joe Biden, Athens, Ohio, Oct. 15, 2008

Talk about obama,

“A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next President of the United States — Barack America!” –Joe Biden, at his first campaign rally with Barack Obama after being announced as his running mate, Springfield, Ill., Aug. 23, 2008

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” –Joe Biden, referring to Barack Obama at the beginning of the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Jan. 31, 2007

Talk about himself,

”Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.” –Joe Biden, speaking at a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, Sept. 10, 2008

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/13-things-joe-biden-is-not-allowed-to-say-at-tonights-debate/

Is this little Worm Ryan going to Man Up to Romney's Lies, "OOPS" for Got Paul is also a Pathological Liar !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone with even a scintilla of intellectual acumen need only glimpse at the impact "Obama style socialism" has had in Europe to bear witness to America's future under Obama.

On the verge of defaulting on government debts, people are living under crushing austerity measures. Countless jobs have been wiped out; the official unemployment rate is 17-25%. Salaries have been cut to the bone. Pensions and health benefits have been slashed. Tourism industry is a shambles. Tens of thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest a problem they thought they'd never see in their lifetime! In picturesque plazas, beggars outnumber tourists and protesters outnumber beggars.

In front of Parliament, riot police stand watch to protect big spending socialist lawmakers from angry mobs. It is this kind of chaos that lies in wait should Obama be reelected!

Romney/Ryan 2012

Roger-785733 - who writes,

Tonight's debate scores as follows . . . . . Joe Biden = 99 Paul Ryan = 01 An easy win for Joe Biden . . . Obama/Biden win easy 2012 ~

As an independent, when I see garbage like this coming form the likes of these leftest Liberals it makes me wonder if they are human.

The difference btween jerks like this and the opposition is that the opposition would never size a debate of this importance as a 99 to 1 contest. Not even the President lost this bad.

Roger, what kind of drugs does Obama Care gives you? Whatever it is you shoul stop taken it. How on earth can you have the nerves to call others stupid?

Pigotry, you are going to be late for your dinner date with Feisty if you don't get moving. Try not to choke on your silly political rhetoric.

To the liberals I say, "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things." It would serve you well to consider a more broad-based intellectual approach to viewing the upcoming election!

Surrender your childish perspective and support of this closet Marxist! Conduct an aggressive "unbiased" research into Obama's past. When you do, you will conclude Obama is a wolf in sheep's clothing whose dangerous anti-colonialism perspective makes him determined to marginalize America at any cost!

Ryan comes to the debate to Roost with Big Bird !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liar, Liar, Big Bird...that's all you got???

Is it just me, that thinks Mitt Romney has a Psychopathic Personalty Disorder? God help us if he gets into office and he goes even crazier than he currently is. 1 hand on the Prozac bottle and the other on the red button

Obama/Biden 2012 We need Sanity in the WhiteHouse not a Psychopath

I think he fits the majority of these points below

The following characteristics of a psychopath, defined by Hervery M. Cleckley in 1941 in the book Mask of Sanityinclude:

• Superficial charm and average intelligence.
• Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
• Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
• Unreliability.
• Untruthfulness and insincerity.
• Lack of remorse or shame.
• Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
• Poor judgement and failure to learn from experience.
• Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
• General poverty in major affective reactions.
• Specific loss of insight.
• Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
• Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink, and sometimes without.

also

Because of their inability to gauge when their actions are being perceived as dishonest, deceitful or dangerous, they also fail to accept that there are consequences for their actions. They always maintain a belief that they can outwit those who pursue them and that they will never be caught. Once caught, they believe they will find a way back out.

I think there is a lot to say about Mitts Mental Health Issues even his wife Queen Annie said she is worried about his Mental Well Being

Paul Ryans loves Ayn Rand but most people dont know is that Ayn Rand Blueprint was Adolph Hitlers Mein Kampf and I heard a Rumor that Paul Ryan Loved Marge Schott the late owner of the Cincinnatti Reds who herself was a devoted follower of the Nazi Party

The Choice is very clear come November

A Vote for Robme/Lyin Ryan is a Vote for War, Death and destruction of our Children

A Vote for Obama/Biden is a Vote for Sanity and Safety of our Children

It is not hard....... VOTE STRAIGHT DEMOCRAT THROW THE GOP/AMERICAN TALIBAN OUT OF OFFICE

We already have seen what Bush and the GOP did to the USA in 2008, and we have Mittens/Bush2.0 steroided out wanting the same old failed policys

Hey if you are 55 and younger get ready for a Health Voucher, You can choose between a Heart attack and a Stroke but you cant get both unless you pay that additional 8 thousand a year to your insurance company, and then you got to hope that they don't throw you off the insurance, because we know the insurance company has a heart and are not in it for the Bottom dollar

The GOP/Tea Party Chant is Lets Vote for Romney and lets get rid of all of the parasitic Seniors

Obama/Biden your Grandparents life depend on it

We cannot afford as a Nation Psychopathic Personality Disorder Myth Robme or If my mouth is moving I am Lying Paul Ryan in office

sharriannie-

@pig

foreclosure rates lowest in years...OMG there's nothing left to foreclose on... Good news???????? thanks again for the change and unemployment at 12.1% in Nevada.

sharriannie,

To save Nevada state dollars, Governor Brewer has dumped Medicaid patients from the program. Heartlessly, she has revoked life-saving organ transplants for 100 Medicaid patients. With the money that she is "saving the state" you should ask Brewer why it is that she is unable to bring Nevada's unemployment numbers down.

Patriotic American, get of the Big Bird crap. Sick of hearing it. If that is all you can campaign on, grow up. Sad to see you and your party has resorted to that. Grow up and run on a platform, oh, sorry you don't have one.

All that you need to be aware of tonight is, that IF Barrack Hussein wins, our great Republic will continue to be a heartbeat away from Joe "Robinette" Biden becoming president.

If this doesn't scare any intelligent real American, you deserve what you get.

ROMNEY/RYAN 2012 FOR REAL AMERICANS©

Concern Citizen-856329

As an Independent? Strange how the ranks of Independents swelled so disproportionately just as millions of Republican rats jumped ship from the disastrous Bush Titanic. Liars beget liars. That explains how history will record that the Republican candidates for the White-house lost the election in 2012 because they were the most brazen liars in American political history.

Republican Nixon called the American electorate sheep. Republicans Romney and Ryan believe us to be fools.

what Obama don't want you to know. from president Kennedy mouth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI8IdVQsk-4

"Fight Night" don't you just love the media that control our press and our minds ... welcome to low life foolville!!

JimSpence ... and you want Ryan to be in control ... what a fool .............

Commonsense101

Republicans Romney and Ryan believe us to be fools.

If you vote for Barrack Hussein, they're right.

ROMNEY/RYAN 2012 FOR REAL AMERICANS©

Real Americans? As in Romney that publicly supported the extremely unpopular Vietnam War? Then promptly ran off to France in his magic underpants to avoid serving in that very same war? How many real Americans took his place on the front lines? You can't be serious!

Ryan will continue his lies; like his 95 minute marathon.

Commonsense101

How many real Americans took his place on the front lines?

Well, we know it certainly wasn't your gaffe-a-holic Joe "Bite Me" Biden with his 5 deferrments for a mythical case of asthma as a child.

You remember, right?

The asthma that didn't prevent him from playing football in high school and college or being a life guard.

Remember?

The same mysterious asthma that he NEVER mentioned in his own memoirs.

Remember?

At least Romney donates more than 1% to charity like Joe "Robinette". That's pathetic. My kids donate more from their summer jobs.

Hypocrite!

Try to keep up Spanky.

ROMNEY/RYAN 2012 FOR REAL AMERICANS©

You Dems do know that Biden & Sandusky are the same fella doncha? LMAO!!!

I just hope that Ryan doesn't give old man Biden/Sandusky a heart attack!!

R/R 2012 to show how America can run better!!

JimSpence

Romney has five healthy sons. How many have served in the military? Biden has a son that has faced the enemy in military service. Who has a greater stake in promoting future wars?

Pigorty - You are aware that the only reason unemployment claims are down is because CALIFORNIA'S Unemployment numbers are missing? Another LIE FORM THE OBAMA ADMINISRATION!!

I'm surprised that Joe Biden's tyrett's syndrome has gone undiagnosed for so long.

Sister and Brother Americans, You watched Lyin'Ryan Discharge all of his spiritual vitriol Lying to Biden and the national media;Except Biden, as We do, see through EddiMunster. Ryan's budget cuts to "balance the budget"? School cuts, food cuts, national service cuts BUT! BUT!! This LyingB@$TARD wants to extend EVEN MORE Tax Evasion Bonuses for his masters THE EVIL republicanCrimeCartel. This Treasonous criminal and his "boss of bosses" makes the Mafia look like Mary Poppins. Their aristocrat/elitist power bosses are the B@$T@RDS who raised gas to $4.60p/g, Retarded Hiring so jobs are scarce, Created the insurance company "health care" Gold Mine for the thieving healthcare insurance industry, AS Rommel's pal @united healthcare TOOK HOME FOR 2008 SALARY! $128,000,000 *C A S H* for That year ALONE!! while PAID policyhilders were denied and died.You know what? OUR America, the most advanced country in the world, DOES NOT HAVE A UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM so as to leave WE Americans at the mercy of the health insurance SHARKS like united heathcare, IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You Know what I saw in this latest debate? I saw paul ryan, as the pathetic puppet doing the LYING and Bidding for his EVIL EVIL Aristocrat/Elitist Bosses. You KNOW how they were Disposed of during the French Revolution in 1790; with a FINAL Date With THE MADAM. Here is a Very Very Very helpful link you wil find both interesting, amusing and insightful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og35U0d6WKY&feature=player_detailpage

well, as for me, i took the time to actually read all these previous comments both in defense of and against the VP. i still keep coming back with the same thought and so far none of the previous viners have been able to answer it. why now, after 4 years in office are we the american voters, the american people getting this heartfelt view of the VP? most of the news, be it media or newspaper, magazines have shown US the VP has forced the POTUS continually shutting him up and that bit where the VP had to apologize to the POTUS infront of the american people (remember that?)

Schmuck.

they should air this on comedy central, the question is not if Biden will say something stupid, but how many stupid things, Biden is so dumb ah Man I can't wait, cause I haven't seen a funny movie lately!

I call for 8 stupid things from Biden.

I think the cable company has listed the debate in the "comedy" category due to Biden's expected performance.

this debate will be hilarious and a total win for the GOP.

in one corner you have a babbling buffoon in Joe "Gaffe Machine" Biden.

in the other you have the calm, cool collected Paul "The Human Calculator" Ryan

after obama's piss poor debate performance, joe is itching to come out swinging and attempt to make paul look stupid with smart ass quips and lame jokes. what will end up happening is joe will get way too agressive in his attempt to make up for obama's lack of effort and say at least 5 top tier gaffes that end up being very damaging to the image of him and the president. i expect ryan to easily deflect and debunk everything Biden says with relative ease.

Ryan to me is the kind of guy you would expect to be a loan officer at a bank, while Biden is like that uncle you have thats fun to be around but makes a fool of himself regularly because he drinks way too much at holiday dinners.

i will have my popcorn ready and waiting...

This should be good. It is funny to watch the 'conservatives' talk about their 'new ideas' which I think Romney's main adviser has publicly admitted is basically Bush warmed over.

Get ready for some serious flippin' and floppin', Joe. It is going to be hard to be against abortion and for it at the same time. Paul will be for cutting spending one minute, and increasing spending the next. Same with taxes. They are going to cut them, next Mitt denies that he plans a 20% across the board cut.

It's a breath Mitt!
It's a candy Mitt!
It's two, two, two Mitts in one!

Obummer is spiking the football about the killing of OBL, but refuses to take on responsiblity for the lack of security in Libya where our 4 Americans were killed one month ago today and the lies they told the American about....it was caused by a video.

I think it was W.C. Fields who said "never act with kids or dogs!" or something like that because no matter what you do or how well you perform the "kid or the dog is always going to get the attention." Tonight it's Biden vs. the kid. On merit Ryan couldn't hold Biden's coat!. In the press Ryan is a near 'can't miss.'

Biden has spent his political career just making stuff up. So much so that the media just calls it another Biden gaff, and liberals claim he is just being Joe. Sounds like the family reunion when the adults tell the kids to humor their uncle Joe but pay no attention to what he has to say. Biden is an example of what is wrong in Washington, when a buffoon can spend his life on the taxpayers dole because liberals are too stupid to send him packing.

Tough truths to hear. You can bet the O followers have their ears plugged & eyes covered with scales, so the truth will not affect them in a normal way. Right on for expressing all that.

Many of these posts give credence to the assertion that thirsty American liberal democrats placed in a desert would drink sand, not because they were dying of thirst, but because they simply don't know the difference! Were that not the case, it would be impossible to explain reelecting a president who has historically been unwilling to even place his hand over his heart as American's national anthem was being played! A president unwilling to publicly pledge his allegiance to the country has should never be allowed to serve in such a hallowed role!

Boy the bigot tea party is out in force this evening. Hell their principals and tactics are so close to the Taliban that it is hard to see the difference, religious fanatics, comes in all breeds I guess.

@spot

great hair and beard, think you'd fit right in....in the middle east.

sharriannie go to your recruiting station little boy, sign up, your savior Romeny and his sidekick Ryan would appreciate your service. Love my hair and beard, thanks for the compliment. LMAO

The Whig Party candidate, Zachary Taylor, won the presidential election of 1848. The Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, is forgotten. Martin Van Buren, a former president and the Free Soil Party candidate, placed third.

The Republican Party did not exist in 1848. There had been a different party called "Republican" or "Democratic-Republican" from about 1790 to about 1836, but that party's story will be covered separately.

The exact founding of the Republican Party is disputed, but aspects of the party were in existence around 1852 and its founding convention was on July 6, 1854 at Jackson, Michigan., In the fall of 1854 it elected 40 members to the U.S. House of Representatives (more if you count representatives co-nominated by the American and Republican parties). By the elections of 1856 it had gone from third party status to being the main rival of the Democrats.

What happened between 1848 and 1854 that could create a full-blown political party in so short a time? There were two main causes: the slavery issue and the rise and fall of the American Party, mistakenly called the Know-Nothing Party. Like the Republican Party, the American Party came into existence quickly and elected a large number of officials; it had the most members of any political party in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1854.

The Whigs, the number 2 party since the 1820's, had been formed in opposition to the Democrats as led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The party was not formed around any particular principles. Led originally by Henry Clay, it was a loose coalition of men who sought office for any of a number of reason. In the north it included abolitionists and people opposed to the expansion of slave territories, and those favoring protective, high tariffs (customs duties); in the south it favored slavery and lower tariffs. This worked fine until about 1850, but the renewed struggle over extending slavery to new western states and territories demanded that men chose sides. The southern Whigs deserted the party to join the Democrats, who were clearly the party of slavery. The northern Whigs mostly hopped on the American Party on their way to becoming Republicans.

But the core of the Republican Party appears to have evolved from the Free Soil Party. It had grown out of the free soil movement, which stood against extensions of slavery. The failure of the Whigs to take a stand, as a national party, against extending slavery left a political opening which the Free Soil Party filled. They also attracted anti-slavery northern Democrats. An important part of their platform was free homesteads for settlers from federal lands. Their slogan was "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Though they did not, as a party, advocate abolishing slavery in the southern states, their party was closest to an abolitionist view. In 1848 their presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, ran a distant third but received 291,623 votes. They sent two Senators and fourteen Representatives to Congress. In 1852 they ran John P. Hale for president, but received only 155,825 votes. Around 1852 they merged into the Republican Party.

The American Party was formed primarily as an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic group. Its recruits came mostly from the Whig Party, though many Democrats joined as well. Founded as a secret organization, so secret they came to be called "Know Nothings," they did not come out as the American Party until after their great successes in local and congressional elections of 1854. In 1856 Millard Filmore was their presidential candidate, gaining 8974,534 votes, one of the best third-party showings in U.S. history. But they were divided by the slavery issue, and by 1858 most American Party adherents in the north merged into the Republican Party, while in the south they rejoined the Democrats.

Though not a separate party, the abolitionists were an important component in creating the Republican Party. The idea of abolishing slavery was old; it had been declared abolished in Great Britain by the Somerset Decision of 1771, which helped precipitate the American Revolution. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies in 1833 also put Americans on a low moral footing. The debates about extending slavery to the western territories and new states made everyone in America aware of the abolitionist stance.

Steps to Civil War

Five great events mark the U.S.'s progress towards the Civil War: the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, and the election of the first Republican President.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Maine to be admitted to the union as a free state and Missouri to be admitted as a slave state. Most of the remaining Louisiana Territory - actually the land of sovereign native Indian nations - that the nation's leaders planned to annex was declared to be free. It seemed that this would stop the spread of slavery. But the annexation of Texas in 1845 and then northern Mexico (now the U.S.'s southwestern states) in 1848 changed the political equation.

California was the most populous of the conquered lands and applied in 1849 to become a free state. That would give free states a majority in the Senate as well as the House; slavers feared it was the first step to political defeat. A fierce debate ensued in Congress in 1850, with compromise as the result. California was admitted as a free state, but New Mexico and Utah were to decide for themselves if they wanted to allow slavery. In the District of Columbia the slave trade, but not slavery itself, was outlawed. And the most stringent Fugitive Slave Act ever was enacted.

The Fugitive Slave Act was very offensive to citizens in free states. Many people in the northern states who were not set on abolishing slavery in the south felt that if a slave escaped to a free state, they became free. It was a matter of states' rights and people's rights. Many of these citizens were driven into the abolitionist camp by the sight of escaped slaves being re-captured and by the prosecution of those who ran the Underground Railroad. They also lost interest in the Whig Party, which endorsed the Act along with the Democratic Party. This lead to the creation of the Free Soil Party, and eventually to the creation of the Republican Party

Kansas and Nebraska were the next Indian lands to be turned into states; they were to be free states under the Compromise of 1850. But in 1854 Stephen A. Douglas, a leading Democrat, proposed that instead the citizens in those territories be allowed to choose for themselves whether to be free or slave states. The pro-slavery Democrats had the votes to put the plan, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, through. The Whigs and the new American Party did nothing to stop it.

The abolitionists, free soilers, and those who wanted no extensions to slave territories (though they were willing, for the sake of keeping southern states in the Union, to allow slavery to continue where it already existed), needed a new party. They chose not to try to reform the Democrats, Whigs, or American Party. The Republican Party was born alive and kicking in 1854.

But, like the American Party and the Whigs, the Republican Party might have disappeared quickly if it had not been for the ongoing debate (and in Kansas, what amounted to a civil war) over slavery. The final straw that tipped the northern states against the long tradition of Democratic Party power was the Dred Scott Decision. It is important to recall that the American Constitution legalized slavery at the time the British Parliament was debating abolishing the slave trade. It was individual states that outlawed slavery. Since state-rights was an accepted political doctrine until the Civil War, for the most part this going-against the pro-slavery Constitution had been tolerated by the slavers who controlled southern state governments.

Dred Scott hoped that the result of his case would be like the Somerset decision had been in England. It would make clear that stepping onto free soil made you a free man. But the Supreme Court, dominated by Democratic Party appointees, declared that Dred Scott remained the private property of his owners. They went further, implying that no state had the right to deny a citizen the right to put his private property, including slaves, anywhere he saw fit. The Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1857. Republican Party candidates for local office and the House of Representatives dominated the elections in northern states in 1858.

Presidential Elections of 1856 and 1860

In 1856 the Republican Party overtook the Whig Party to become the great rival of the Democratic Party. But it was not simply a reformed and renamed Whig Party. The Whigs had been a national party; the Republicans were almost all in the non-slave states. The Whig Party had been political largely in the sense that it was a grouping of people who sought government offices; the Republican Party was a party of principles, a party that took positions on a variety of issues and promised to change the laws of the land in fundamental ways.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan for president in 1856. The Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who used the "free soil, free labor, free speech, free men" slogan for his campaign. The American Party and the Whigs both nominated ex-president Millard Fillmore. Buchanan won well less than half the popular vote, but took a large majority in the Electoral Collage (1,838,169 and 174). Fremont received the second largest number of citizen votes and votes in the Electoral College (1,341, 264 and 114). Fillmore placed third with a substantial number of popular votes but won only Maryland (874,534 and 8).

The congressional elections of 1858 were heavily influenced by popular reaction to the Dred Scott decision. The American Party and Whigs continued their declines. The Democrats, though still a national party, were increasingly identified with slavery. The Republicans continued to strengthen their role in free-state politics.

The presidential election of 1860 is one of the most interesting in American history. The Whig-American-Republican grouping had lost the presidency in 1856 because their vote was divided. Yet the Democrats divided their vote in 1860. The reason was simple: the voters had become passionate about the issue of slavery. In fact, with slavers fighting anti-slavery militias in Kansas, and John Brown having conducted his anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, they were doing more than just voting about the issue. The Republicans were all against slavery, though a large majority of the party were willing to allow it to continue to exist in the southern slave states if its expansion was stopped and slaves became free when they stepped on free state soil (reversing the Dred Scott decision). The Democrats divided into two factions, basically southern and northern factions. Stephen Douglas was the mainstream, northern Democrat; his position was to let each state decide whether to allow slavery or not. That was not good enough for the more radical slave masters, who nominated John Breckinridge on a platform of extending slavery. The remnants of the southern Whig and American parties merged into yet another party, the Constitutional Union Party. Nominating John Bell, they emphasized the need to preserve the union, going to great lengths to take no stand on slavery or its extension.

While the Constitutional Union Party candidate split off some votes that might otherwise have gone to Lincoln, the Democrat vote was much more closely divided. As a result, though he only received 40% of the popular vote (1,866,452), Abraham Lincoln received 180 Electoral College votes, compared to 123 total for the other 3 candidates. All of Lincoln's Electoral College votes came from free states, that is, from northern states plus California and Oregon.

Civil War

Passion often makes for bad judgment, and the slavers proceeded to make a series of mistakes that forced Lincoln and the Republicans to abolish slavery.

When 1861 dawned, with Lincoln soon to be inaugurated, the slavers actually still held the political upper hand. The majority of Supreme Court justices were pro-slavery. Republicans did not have a majority in either house of Congress. To abolish slavery would require a constitutional amendment, which could be blocked by one-quarter of the states; slavers controlled almost one half of the states.

Yet before Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated on March 4, 1861, 7 states announced they had seceded from the U.S. They joined together as the Confederate States of America, under the leadership of a leading member of the Democratic Party, Jefferson Davis.

Aside from the slavery issue, leading southern businessmen and politicians feared the Republicans for another reason. Some Republican politicians, including Lincoln, a former lawyer for the railroads, were backed by northern businessmen, in particular the owners of railroad and manufacturing corporations. Cotton growers feared higher protective tariffs on imported manufactured goods; the south was already deeply indebted to northern bankers and merchants.

Another mistake of the southerners was not taking the matter to the Supreme Court. It is very possible that the Supreme Court, with 5 southern members on it, would have ruled that states have a right to secede. But to admit that the Supreme Court had any jurisdiction over them was as galling to the southern secessionists as it was to the northern abolitionists who evaded the Fugitive Slave laws and Dred Scott ruling.

Not content to rule over a greatly diminished United States, the Republican Party and others who opposed secession (many northern Democrats were pro-slavery but anti-secession) forced a civil war upon the nation. There were two important effects of the Civil War upon the Republican Party (aside from the lasting effects of winning the war).

First, it became the party of Big Government and high taxes. It favored a centralized national government over state and local governance. The Republican war effort required high taxes to pay for men and their supplies, and that supported the industrialization process that went along with war. It became closely tied to northern manufacturing interests, which included a greatly enlarged class of millionaires created by war profiteering. Second, it took on the virtuous role of favoring the abolition of slavery and the improvement of the lives of economically deprived citizens, both Negro and those of European descent. This role is highlighted by the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided free land to western settlers.

These two roles corresponded to two ‘wings" of the party, the moderate wing and the Radical Republicans.

It was the Radical Republicans who supported the Confiscation Act (freeing the slaves of soldiers fighting the union), the Emancipation Proclamation, which was intended to abolish slavery in the confederate states, and the 13th Amendment, which did abolish slavery in the re-united states. They also pushed for the established the Freedmen's Bureau.

The Negro Wing of the Republican Party

In order to remain President in a war-weary nation, in the 1864 contest the Republicans had combined with pro-union, pro-war Democrats into the Union Party. Lincoln had taken Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his Vice-Presidential running mate. When Lincoln was assassinated the country suddenly had a Democrat for president and a Republican Congress led by the Radical Republicans. They denied the now-defeated southern former-slavers the right to sit in Congress; set up the Committee on Reconstruction to rule the southern states; and fought with President Johnson to the point of attempting to impeach him.

In 1866 and 1868 Negro voters helped elect Republican congresses and a new Republican President, Ulysses S. Grant. Radical Republican control of Congress resulted in all male Americans, regardless of their origins or skin color, receiving the right to vote upon passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. The former slave states also remained under military occupation until new state constitutions, written to the liking of Radical Republicans, were in place.

White southerners, with few exceptions, became even more solidly identified with the Democratic Party. Many could not run for office or vote because of their records as traitors. Freed slaves, with few exceptions, joined the Republican Party, giving it a presence in the south for the first time. Many Negroes were elected to local and state offices. For the ex-slavers the situation was intolerable, and the solution was terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist wing of the southern Democratic Party. In locality after locality, then state after state, former slaves were scared away from voting, and then from even being registered to vote. Until the Great Depression most black Americans would be Republicans; in the South they would constitute most of the Republican Party. However, after 1876 few black Americans were able to vote in the southern states. As a result black politicians could not be elected to office; in the South no Republicans could be elected to office at all; and the influence of blacks within the national party was minimal.

Wall Street Republicans

Starting with the civil war and accelerating into the 20th century the United States economy was rapidly industrialized. Even the agricultural economy was being mechanized, so that fewer people's labor sufficed to grow and harvest bountiful crops of wheat and corn. Displaced farmers migrated to the towns and cities. Even food came to be processed in great factories. Corporations were the main form of organization of the large-scale business that grew during this period. Much of politics of the era consisted of struggles between the wealthy, who owned stock in the corporations, and those who labored for wages, ran smaller businesses, or continued to farm on a small scale. Since the Republican Party both dominated the national government and dominated the northern state governments where manufacturing was concentrated, controlling the party was important to the men of great wealth. By using their wealth to support the campaigns of politicians, who in turn used all their power to help their donors, wealthy Americans came to dominate the Republican Party. Radical Republicans lost elections to business-sponsored candidates, and the business of the Republican Party came to be protecting corporate interests. After this point we may refer to the controlling elite of the Republican Party as Wall Street Republicans.

In 1872 a group of anti-corruption minded Republicans formed the Liberal Republican party and nominated newspaper editor Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate. The Democrats, eager to rebuild their party, decided to nominate Greeley as well. But with Grant still a war hero, the Democrats still the party of treason, and many black Americans still able to vote, it was any easy victory for Grant. Two demands of the Liberal Republicans were adopted by the mainstream Republicans. Except for 500 ex-confederate leaders, former rebels had their voting rights, and their right to run for office, restored. Civil service reform was also attempted.

The Presidential election of 1876 provides a good view of the changing social and political landscape. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes. The Klan had done its job: the Democrats swept the southern states excepting two remaining under military governance, South Carolina and Louisiana, plus Florida, then a sparsely populated state with only 4 electoral votes. The winner was disputed in those three states. After much bargaining Hayes was given the Presidency, but only after he promised to pull the remaining federal troops out of the South and, effectively, to do nothing about the disenfranchisement of black voters by the Democratic Party.

Despite more charges of corruption and economic hard times, the Republicans were able to hold onto majorities in Congress until the mid-term elections of 1882. The Democrat's combination of having a Protestant, white-racist wing in the south and a Catholic, immigrant-based, urban wing in the North, was proving to be too powerful for the Republicans. In 1884 the Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland in another close election. But for wealthy men and their corporations, this was not a problem; they controlled both parties quite effectively. The Supreme Court was filled with former corporate lawyers; it could be relied on to overrule state legislature or even a Congress that went against corporate wishes. With both parties dominated by business, a new movement arose. The Farmers Alliance, the Populist Party, labor unions, anarchism, and socialism all were important components of American politics in the late 1880's.

It is important to note that the average Republican voter of the era was not rich, corrupt, or mean-spirited. Most Republicans were farmers, tradesmen, or factory workers who had fought with the Union during the Civil War. They believed in hard work and honest business dealings; they were assets to their communities. Often they voted Republican because the only other choice was to vote Democrat. When offered an honest politician to vote for, or a Progressive Republican candidate, they usually availed themselves to the opportunity. Corporate domination of the Republican Party was carried out in backrooms and by creating a party machine that would see that corporate-friendly candidates were nominated.

Sugar, Hanna, McKinley and War

Many businessmen had great influence in politics at the end of the 19th century, but most were content with high tariffs (customs taxes on imported manufactured goods) and freedom from regulations. The Sugar Trust, however, took control of United States politics for profit to a new level: it required war, and it got war.

A prelude to the main show was provided by Hawaii, where a treaty had granted U.S. rights to a naval base in Pearl harbor in 1887. In 1893, aided by U.S. troops, American sugar cane growers overthrew the native government and asked for Hawaii to be annexed to the United States. But by the time a bill for that was ready in the U.S. Senate, Grover Cleveland had been elected President. He sent a commission to Hawaii that found most Hawaiians wanted to remain independent. No further action was taken until after a much bigger sugar fight.

Sugar magnate Henry Havemeyer had a few problems even after he became fabulously rich and the controlling person in the Sugar Trust. His factories turned raw cane sugar into the crystal white powder that had been a mainstay of world trade for centuries. Not only was very little sugar cane grown in the U.S. (mostly in Louisiana), but some U.S. farmers wanted to grow and refine sugar beets to compete with cane. What the Sugar Trust needed was cheap, untaxed imports of raw sugar, but very high tariffs on competing imported refined sugar. Congress was willing to go along (Havemeyer had perfected the stock-tip bribe: Senators could get rich quick by simply buying and selling sugar trust stock on Havemeyer's instructions) on the high tariffs for imported refined sugar, but Louisiana Senators vigorously opposed low tariffs on raw sugar.

Various interests in the U.S. had long coveted Cuba and other islands in Spain's American empire. Havemeyer determined to buy himself a President and a war. While it is well known that Mark Hanna raised vast sums of money to insure William McKinley triumphed over Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 Presidential election, the role of the Sugar Trust in that election has been overlooked. McKinley owed Havemeyer a war; many American expansionists like Theodore Roosevelt wanted a war anyway. Delay was necessary only because Havemeyer needed to have Citibank buy up sugar plantations in Cuba and Puerto Rico that would become vastly more valuable after the war. Forget the explosion of the Maine: America was going to war regardless. McKinley made demands of the Spanish, had them met fully, and then made even more aggressive demands that no nation would find acceptable.

On April 11, 1898 McKinley asked Congress to declare war, and Democrats and Republicans alike were happy to do it. Spain had already lost the Philippines, excepting Manila, to native rebels, and was barely holding its own against Cuban rebels. On August 12, 1998, the Spanish signed an armistice. 500 Americans had died in battle, while 5000 had died of tropical diseases.

In the Philippines the defeat of the Spanish started an even greater war: one against the Filipino people themselves. They fought guerrilla style; probably 1,000,000 died, many of them civilians; and 4,324 American soldiers were killed. In 1901 the Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured. Most sugar plantations had new American owners. In 1942 the Japanese "liberated" the Philippines from the United States; in 1946, after driving out the Japanese, the U.S. finally allowed the Philippines to become an independent nation.

Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives

The heritage of the Radical and Liberal Republicans was partly buried by the rise of the powerful, corporate and increasingly conservative business wing of the party. But the same economic, technical and cultural changes that affected the entire nation affected the ordinary Republican citizens who often had much input into local politics even when corrupt men occupied higher office.

As the 20th century dawned the reform movement became a tidal wave. A number of streams of citizens' demands came together and fed into each other. Even some demands of socialists gained an audience among Republicans who had felt the brunt of the predatory tactics of the gigantic business corporations. Writers, including the muckrakers, novelists writing books like Frank Norris's The Octopus about Republican farmers being crushed by Republican railroad barons, and non-fiction like Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, had a notable influence on the Republican faithful. The financial panic of 1907 also undermined people's belief in the infallibility of the free market.

Anger at the patent drug industry, the alcohol industry, and the food industry was widespread. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, had become President in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated. Though he had been a promoter of the Spanish-American and then the Philippine-American wars, and was from a very wealthy family, Roosevelt had shown concern for the plight of the poor when serving as New York police commissioner. During Roosevelt's presidency the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed in 1906. The conservation on national forests had started under Republican President Harrison in 1891; but Roosevelt pushed hard on this issue. He placed some 125 million acres in federal reserves, about 3 times the total of all of his predecessors.

While the reformers, known as the Progressive Movement, could be found in both political parties (and in third parties), they had more influence, during this period, in the Republican Party. In addition to Roosevelt, well-known Progressive Republicans included governor Robert ("Fighting Bob") La Follette of Wisconsin, California's governor Hiram Johnson, and governor Charles Evans Hughs of New York State. Issues like getting the right of women to vote cut across party lines, with suffragettes in Republican states working within the Republican Party.

In 1911 the National Progressive Republican league was formed to oust President Taft and get a progressive in the White House. Roosevelt decided to head the progressives and won most of the Republican primaries in 1912. But Taft controlled a majority of delegates to the nominating convention and received the nomination.

The Progressives thought Teddy could beat both the Republicans and the Democrats, so they split and formed the Progressive Party. The Democrats nominated the racist, but otherwise posing as progressive, Woodrow Wilson. Of course Wilson won and the Republicans would not regain the Presidency until 1920.

Roaring Back in the 20's

The 1920's were a critical period for the Republican Party. While the party would contain a progressive or liberal wing until the 1970's, during the 1920's the Wall Street wing gained an ascendency which it never lost. Partly this was because of President Wilson's performance in office, which led to a landslide in 1920 for Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding over Democrat nominee James M. Cox. It was the first presidential election in which women could vote, and they voted Republican.

After a postwar recession the American economy continued the process of rapid industrialization. The European industrial powers had worn themselves out, but America had entered the war only after selling them vast amounts of arms and food. Because the U.S. had spent relatively little on the war, its taxes were relatively low, and manufacturers had a global competitive advantage. Harding appointed men who believed businesses needed no regulation to the agencies that were supposed to regulate business. An ardent anti-conservationist, Albert Fall, was appointed Secretary of Interior.

At the same time businessmen were terrified of the Communist revolution that had taken place in Russia (with failed attempts in several other countries). Conservative groups labeled anyone demanding any reform a communist. Of course there were actual communists, belonging to the American Communist Party, which took orders from Moscow, but most progressives wanted reforms through democratic change, not a dictatorship created by a bloody revolution.

While the economy grew, the stock market ran wild. Taxes on the rich were reduced by two-thirds by the sympathetic Republican Congress. Tariff's on imported goods were greatly increased, supporting prices American manufacturers could charge at the expense of farmers and consumers. Scandals were plentiful, notably the Teapot Dome scandal. Meanwhile organized businessmen made black-market profits selling alcohol to the thirsty, a business made possible by the passage of the Prohibition amendment in 1919.

Harding died in office of natural causes and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. Republicans had another fling with Progressive ideas in the 1924 election, when some split again from the main party and nominated Bob La Follette for President. Calvin Coolidge led the main party ticket. The Democrats nominated a conservative Wall Street lawyer, John W. Davis. This time the Republican split did not prevent a Republican landslide. But Cal only served one term. The Republican nominee in 1928 was Herbert Hoover.

It is difficult to imagine now how popular Herbert Hoover was in 1928. He and the Republicans were so popular it looked as if the Democratic Party might cease to exist. He had become famous during World War I for getting food to the starving in Belgium. He had a good record as Secretary of Commerce; a little too good for the crooked politicians and their businessmen friends. The Democrats nominated Al Smith, who was devoted to making alcohol legal again. That and his Catholicism made him unpopular even in the "solid South" where the Klan, the backbone of the Democratic Party, was almost as anti-Catholic as it was anti-Negro.

Hoover received 21,391,381 votes to Smith's 15,016,443. Smith carried only the 5 solidest states of the Solid South. Hoover was sworn in as President on March 4, 1929. No one knew it then, but the stock market had already peaked.

The Great Depression and a Half-century in the Minority

The exodus of farmers, especially tenant farmers and laborers, for factory jobs continued during the 1920s. Agriculture had not prospered with the rest of the economy during the 1920's. Hoover tried to help by signing the Agricultural Marketing Act in June of 1929. It established a Farm Board that hoped to raise prices of agricultural products. But farmer's unsold surpluses were so large that it never achieved its goals.

By October of 1929 the stock market was down noticeably, though the economy itself was still going strong. Savvy investors like Joseph Kennedy were selling their stocks for cash. Confidence in quick paper stock profits began to wain, and then everyone wanted the paper profits they had accumulated in the 1920's converted to cash on the same day, October 29, 1929. Many speculators had borrowed money to play the market; they were forced to sell their stocks to cover the debts in their margin accounts.

The beloved free-market religion of the most ardent business Republican's had failed (the truest believers blamed the failure on government meddling, the very Devil in their world view). Suddenly realizing they were much poorer, stock speculators cut back on spending. Banks, panicking, called in loans. Demand for goods and services fell, businesses laid off workers, and consumption fell even further.

Herbert Hoover was President when it happened, and Herbert Hoover continued as President until the beginning of 1933. Though Hoover tried various measures, often Congress failed to support him (Republicans because they did not believe in government meddling in business, Democrats because they were delighted to see the nation blame Republicans for the problems). Among the measures tried by Hoover were public projects like the Boulder Dam, creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Norris-La Guardia Act that essentially legalized organizing labor unions.

The Democrats won the Congressional (and state and local) elections of 1930, then the Presidency in 1932. In a few short years the Republicans had gone from being the majority party to the minority party.

It is important to note that progressive "liberal" Republicans gained many important positions, notably in Congress, during the Depression years. Many of the acts that are now associated with the Democratic Party, such as Social Security, were in fact passed with broad support from both parties.

Not only would the "business" wing of the Republican Party need decades to see their party have an equal footing with the Democrats, but they would have to work together with a liberal/Progressive wing that had far more influence inside the party.

Towards the end of World War II and during Truman's presidency in particular the Republican Party gained mainly through some voters' irritation at the party in power. In 1946, for instance, the Republicans briefly had a majority in Congress. This success was capped with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President in 1952. But the former WWII commander was much more popular than the party he headed. Eisenhower won by a landslide, but the Republicans barely managed majorities in Congress. An important change took place in the South, however. Florida, Texas and Tennessee went for Eisenhower; the Republican Party began to acquire the southern constituency it would turn to for success after the 1960's.

Eisenhower's Republicans were content to undo what they saw as the most excessive New Deal legacies, such as wage and price controls, but left such programs as Social Security intact. They favored less government-held electricity creation and allowed corporations to begin building nuclear power plants. The economy was again expanding of its own accord, pumped up by a rising birth rate (the baby boom), exports (again, Europe lay prostrate), and pent-up demand from WWII and Korean War era rationing. America still liked Ike in 1956, but the Democrats still held their own in Congress.

Richard Nixon was Ike's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1956 and played an important role within the administration. He was fiercely patriotic and anti-communist, but also adamant that black Americans in the South should be treated as full citizens. In 1954 the Supreme Court, mainly appointed during the New Deal years, declared segregated (by race) schools to be illegal, even if the schools were truly "separate but equal." Southern Democrats and the Klan opposed, sometimes with violence, the integration of southern public schools. In one incident Eisenhower, at Nixon's urging, had to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Democratic governor Faubus tried to prevent the enrollment of "Negro" (the term used in that era) children. The Civil Rights bill of 1957, the first since Reconstruction, was passed with support from Republicans and northern Democrats.

In 1960, allegedly using massive fraud in Illinois, the Democrats won back the presidency by a hair. During the 1960's the Republicans struggled to remain relevant. Blacks enrolling to vote in the formerly segregated southern states forgot that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and the Democrats were the party of Lynching. African-Americans would be the most reliable component of the Democratic party for the remaining decades of the 20th century, and they tipped the scales strongly against the Republicans.

Nixon and Revival

After Vice-President Richard Nixon lost his bid for the Presidency in 1960, what then passed as the ultra-conservative wing gained control of the party. They nominated Barry Goldwater for President in 1964; Lyndon Johnson, who had become President after Kennedy was assassinated, crushed Goldwater in the polls. But Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident and involved the U.S. in a new land war in Asia, in Vietnam. He lost the support of anti-war Democrats, then decided not to run in 1968.

The Republicans next moved back to a centrist, Richard M. Nixon, for their Presidential nominee. The Democrats nominated another centrist, Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President. The Democrats under Johnson had extended the New Deal to include what were called Great Society social welfare programs, also known as the War on Poverty. Nixon held to the traditional Republican belief that the only viable way out of poverty was hard work; programs appropriate in a Great Depression were not needed in the booming economy of 1960's America. Enough working class and middle class Americans agreed with him to elect him President. But the country was still Democratic; both houses of Congress had Democratic majorities, so Nixon had to gain some votes from Democratic congressmen to get his ideas enacted.

Richard Nixon had several remarkable achievements in office. In foreign policy Nixon recognized that Communism was not monolithic. By forging an alliance with Communist China he accelerated the breakup of the communist block countries and helped China regain its status as a great civilization. In domestic policy Nixon realized that the world had changed and that certain reforms had to be put into place to deal with those changes. Notably he signed into law the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In politics Nixon was able to see how the Republican Party might become a majority party again. As the more conservative of the two parties, and in particular the party favoring more individual initiative and less taxes, it was natural that it should find a way to break up the Democratic Party's monopoly in the southern states. The 1972 presidential election would demonstrate that strategy could work.

The War in Vietnam was the biggest issue in the 1972 election. The Democrats nominated George McGovern, who wished to withdraw from Vietnam and was very much in favor of extending New Deal and Great Society programs. The more conservative Democratic Party bosses, though temporarily unable to boss the grassroots around, nevertheless undermined McGovern's campaign. The new black voters for McGovern were counter-weighted by white, conservative, working and middle-class voters, especially in the south, voting Republican for the first time. Nixon won every state but Massachusetts, but the Democrats still held control of Congress.

There may have been an element of racism in the South when white voters began voting for Republican candidates, and later even changed their party registration. After all, blacks were now Democrats. But the main reason white voters switched was because most had little desire, themselves, for social welfare programs. Religion played a role too; the Republican Party was traditionally Protestant, as were white southern voters. These southern voters were also very anti-communist; the Democrats, and McGovern in particular, appeared to be soft on Communism.

But Richard Nixon had made a serious error in judgment on two points. Despite his great achievements, Watergate and the Vietnam War would destroy his reputation. In Vietnam he underestimated how badly the Vietnamese wanted to be free from American domination. No matter how much he threatened, no matter what horrible weapons he unleashed on the people of Vietnam, they continued to fight. Expanding the war into Cambodia backfired, strengthening the Cambodian Communists. Finally Nixon had to negotiate a withdrawal of American troops; after a face-saving period of time, the Communists took control of all of Vietnam. As a result Nixon lost the support of the militarists, who blamed him for losing a war, and of the pacifists, who blamed him for prosecuting it before losing it.

His second great error was unleashing his "dirty tricks" team on the Democrats. In retrospect he would have won the 1972 election easily by simply running an honest campaign. But the dirty-tricks gang was caught burglering the offices of the Democrats in the Watergate Hotel. Nixon tried to cover up his role in the affair, but a committee of Congress kept investigating until Nixon was compelled to resign to avoid impeachment. Since Vice-President Agnew had resigned due to a scandal in 1973, the new Vice-President, Gerald Ford, became the new President of the United States.

The Watergate scandal and disillusionment after the loss of the war in Vietnam temporarily stopped the Republican party's growth. Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon a pardon, but the voters would not pardon Gerald when he ran for President in 1976. The Democrats, worried about their eroding base in the South, nominated a moderate Georgia former governor, Jimmy Carter, and regained the White House.

Reagan and Resurgence

But in the 1976, 1978, and 1980 elections the tendency of the country to realign around the parties on a new basis continued, with the results most visible in the south, where many formerly Democratic voters and elected politicians switched to being Republicans. The conservative wing of the Democratic party was weakened by these defections to the Republicans.

Since the Great Depression the only way the Republicans had been able to get a President elected was by choosing a moderate candidate like Eisenhower or Nixon. That was about to change. The Goldwater Republicans had never given up. As memories of the Depression evaporated, and the results of the 60's drug culture became apparent, their appeal to conservative values and free-market ideology gained ground in the party and with voters. Republicans nominated ultra-conservative former movie actor (and former Governor of California) Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. Jimmy Carter ran for a second term. His defeat is usually attributed to an economic recession, post-Vietnam bad feelings, and the fall of an American puppet, the Shaw of Iran. During the election campaign the revolutionaries in Iran held U.S. consulate members hostage. Carter appeared to be weak and ineffective in dealing with the situation.

From 1932 until 1980 American politics were dominated by the Democratic Party and the idea that the main purpose of government is social welfare and economic expansion through increasing the incomes (and spending) of the working class. Since 1980 (up until this essay is being written in 2005) politics has been dominated by the Republican Party and the idea that the main purposes of government is providing order and economic expansion through increasing the profits of business enterprises. Generally, voters have been happy with economic expansion no matter what the cause (and unhappy with stagnation or decline).

It was called the Reagan Revolution but in fact the Reagan era kept most of the New Deal and Great Society programs, though some were scaled back. It was in foreign policy that Reagan made the most dramatic changes. He escalated the cold war, not by an actual attack, but by increasing military spending to a degree that the Communist block countries could not match. He also found methods, some of them of questionable legality, to undermine socialist and left wing governments, in particular that of Nicaragua. These strategies cumulated (after Reagan left office) in the breaking away of the Eastern European states from Soviet dominance starting with Poland. A regime change in Russia and the breakup of the Soviet union followed.

While domestic policies ended the Reagan era little changed, the positive experience of having an expanding economy and victory over communism greatly strengthened not only the credibility of the Republican Party with American voters, but also the dominance of the conservative wing within the Republican Party.

The Christian Right and Newt Gingrich

In 1988 in the Republican presidential primaries television evangelist Pat Robertson began as a strong contender but withdrew from the race after his claim to have been in combat as a marine in the Korean War was shown to be false. George Bush, Reagan's Vice-President, became the Republican nominee and then President of the United States. He one-term presidency was characterized by a war against Iraq following the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, an oil-rich kingdom on the Persian Gulf.

Despite its Presidential victories in 1980, 1984, and 1988, the Republican Party was still far behind the Democrats in registered voters. To the extent that the two parties were a reflection of economic classes (with a majority of welfare and working class families registered Democrat, a majority of upper-middle and upper class families registered Republican, and the lower-middle to middle-middle class up for grabs), the Republicans were in a corner. Pressing policies like deregulation, lower corporate taxes, and a lower inheritance tax, all highly desired by the dominant Wall Street clique within the party, might have eroded what support they did have among the less wealthy voters.

It was clear to party strategists, which is to say Wall Street Republicans, that they needed to find a way to get votes from people whose economic needs they did not serve. Their success in breaking up the Solid South, the bastion of the Democratic Party until the 1970s, pointed the way. They would take advantage of non-economic, cultural issues to bring into the Party a huge group of voters who were not motivated, or not very motivated, by Republican economic policies.

The target group was fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. Though found everywhere in the nation, these individuals were most prevalent in the former Confederate states. They included some, but not all, Southern Baptists. Politically they had often been apathetic, with low voter turn outs for elections. But that was changing. A set of issues was chosen that would appeal to them, and with the financial backing of Wall Street republicans, a new set of political and religious leaders emerged. Pat Robertson has already been mentioned; other leaders included Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority, and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. The issues that mobilized this movement were demands to make abortions (and even birth control) illegal; to allow or enforce prayer in public schools; and to make the Bible a basis for law.

While this new Religious Right, as it was called, helped elect President Bush in 1988, the alliance was insufficient to give him a victory in 1992. For eight years Democrat Bill Clinton would sit in the White House, but he was under siege from the Republicans, who gained majorities in the House of Representatives starting in 1994. This was the heyday of radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who managed to direct people's anger against Bill Clinton, his first lady, Hillary, and all things "Liberal." Rush's show, spiked with humor at Democrats' expense, was the most popular show on radio. The Republican representatives in Congress were led by Newt Gingrich, who in the 1994 campaigns introduced the Contract with America. This avoided some big, divisive issues like school prayer and gun control. Instead it focused on reforming how Congress operated, tax cuts, tort (lawsuit) reform, and welfare reform (decreasing payments and eligibility).

Moments of Triumph: George W. Bush and the 2000 and 2004 elections

Despite having, or perhaps because of having, Bill Clinton in the White House, the period between 1992 and 2000 saw solid gains for the Republicans in Congress and at the local level. Focusing on cultural issues and promises to cut taxes was paying off.

The Democrats nominated Bill Clinton's Vice-President, Al Gore, for the Presidency in 2000. After a fierce primary struggle George W. Bush, one of the sons of former President George Bush and recently governor of Texas, won the Republican nomination. The Bush family had ties to Wall Street and in particular the petrochemical industry, but so did the Gore family. With little to distinguish the two candidates, and with the Christian Right as campaign foot soldiers, George W. Bush squeaked to a victory. The election was so close that a dispute arose over who had won in the state of Florida, where Jeb Bush, George's brother, was governor. Whoever won in the state would receive its Electoral College votes and win the Presidency. After a lengthy legal dispute the Supreme Court of the United States, voting 5 to 4 on strictly partisan lines, decided in Bush's favor.

With many American's wondering if George W. Bush had fairly won the election, Bush set about his agenda. The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court; it was the first time since 1928 that Republicans controlled all the branches of government. Before President Bush could do much to implement his agenda, however, the Al Quada attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took place on September 1, 2001. The stock market, overheated because the Federal Reserve had kept interest rates too low during the boom (sometimes called the Internet Bubble) of the late 1990's, plummeted, and the rest of the economy quickly followed.

The Republicans had come to be in charge just in time for another disaster that might make them look like Herbert Hoovers and lead to decades of Democratic Party rule. But George W. Bush was no Hoover. He responded vigorously to the Al Quada attack by invading Afghanistan. He secured a future supply of oil for the United States by invading Iraq after falsely claiming Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Rather than increasing social programs to help the country out of the recession, he pushed through tax cuts (that had been planned by Republicans for decades) that favored large businesses, heirs to fortunes, upper-middle class and upper class Americans. While this created a huge federal deficit, it did help revive the economy when combined with the Federal Reserve's lowering of interest rates.

The American voters rewarded George W. Bush and the Republicans by returning them to office in the 2004 elections (Bush's own victory was narrow; he received 62 million votes to Democrat John Kerry's 59 million). This is particularly remarkable given the both the poor performance of the American economy during his first term and the deterioration of employee and small business incomes. Many of the better paying jobs were moved overseas, and the destruction of small, independently owned retailers was particularly fast in this period.

At the time of the writing of this pamphlet, George W. Bush is President of the United States, the Republicans control a majority of the states, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Agree with them or not, that is a major accomplishment for a political party.

At the same time, the Wall Street Republicans appear to be losing control of the party to the religious Republicans. So far the religious Republicans have supported the Wall Street program of reducing taxes on the rich (the capital gains tax, dividend tax, estate tax, and upper-income bracket taxes). But the anger of lower-class Republican voters is fueled as much by economic failure as by cultural values. There is a great potential for backlash against Wall Street, which was given its wish-list. In contrast the promises to make the cultural changes that motivated lower-class citizens to vote with the Republicans have not been met.

The triumph of the religious Republicans within the party might jeopardize the allegiance of the moderate Republicans who are not homosexual bashers or believers in the rapture; who might actually believe that women have a right to contraceptives, abortion, and divorce; or who realize that the same science that makes NASCAR racers run and allows people to watch the races on TV also is absolutely certain that species evolved through mutations and natural selection. Just as American's demanded Prohibition and then revolted against it when they got it, actually banning abortion, contraception, and divorce; forcing every child in America to pray in school from the Evangelical prayer-book; and returning the TV to a 1950's-style sexual innocence, would almost certainly drive voters to elect less puritanical politicians. Which party might come out ahead in that backlash would depend on how the various parties position themselves.

Ryan is coming to the debate with a Corndog in his ????????????????????

I am ashamed to have lyin Ryan represent me in congress.

I would be ashamed to have Lyin Ryan as VP!

I expect Joe to mop the floor with lyin tonight!

If Obama had a conscience he would be ashamed of himself.

Experts project Obama Administration policy will be fully responsible for preventing almost“2 million barrels per day” of possible North American crude oil production from entering the American economy. This equates to a 30 percent reduction supply and in domestic production. Obama put the full court press on Democrats to defeat the Keystone pipeline blocking 700,000 barrels of oil per day while simultaneously choking off oil production under federal leases preventing another 1 million barrels of oil per day this year as he continues his game of Russian roulette with green energy, the American economy and the very security of our nation.

Were it not for shale oil (e.g., fracking) and oil sands production on private land beyond his control, the situation would have been far worse than currently realized.

Come this November, no objective “fully informed” voter could pull the Obama lever lest they first put on blinders and plug their nose! Unfortunately, many of his single issue constituency supporters will do just that. Americans whose intellect has been seasoned by wisdom warn
these fools to "intrare periculo tuo"!

Sean Hannity is going to hold Ryan's hand at the debate !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And Chris (no1islistening) Mathews will be holding Bidens saggy ones! LOL!!

R/R2012

Oh yeah, let's have a theocracy. That always works out well.

Nazarite, why do you waste our time with your right wing insults. Stay the hell off these web pages and go listen to Rush, or watch your FOX news. If you don't like MSNBC or anyone from the left, than stay the hell off. We don't NEED you or your inane banter.

they should air this on comedy central, the question is not if Biden will say something stupid, but how many stupid things, Biden is so dumb ah Man I can't wait, cause I haven't seen a funny movie lately!

I call for 8 stupid things from Biden.

Shoulda woulda coulda.......elected Hillary 4 years ago.....too late.....now the DEMS have Obama and the "wiz kid" Biden.....both are going down starting at 7 AM, Tuesday morning, November 6th and in a landslide! If ya liked 11/2/10.....you are going to love 11/6/12!

No, I think that Obama/Biden will do OK from 7 AM until 5 PM.

5 PM is when the Repubs/Independents and Conservitives get off work. . .

Just Sayen

Stay the hell off these web pages...

Penny, what kind of discussions would be here if there wasn't an opposing point of view? I guess it would just be you liberals poking each other......

Oh yeah, let's have a theocracy. That always works out well.

I guess you have no idea of what the 1st Amendment is!

toxic - on the Libyan Muslim guard application for our consulate, Obama added :"Having same sex partners is a plus, giving you 10 extra points"

Penny sounds like a true libtard. When someone doesn't agree with your opinion try to stifle them.

nazarite - WE'RE DOOMED!!!

lol a herd of Drama Llamas just pulled up. Holy crap.

I have felt on occasion that if Willard Wrongme somehow pulls the deception of the century and convinces enough people that he is worthy of office, that I would be depressed.

I did console myself with the knowledge that Mitt will save us from all our problems if he gets elected. Ladies, you'll be back in the kitchen baking cookies like Ann. All Americans will suddenly have jobs. The deficit will evaporate, and we'll all go dancing in the public square.

Dax sounds like a true fascist. When someone doesn't agree with your opinion try to stifle the

Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a South Carolina racist, a complete unapologetic wealthy, slave owning bigot. The fact that he signed the Declaration of Independence does not make him anything else. What he said, Glorious Founding Father, notwithstanding does not make him less a bigot, a racist and in today's nomencature, probably a Republican!

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever." ---Thomas Jefferson
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law." ---Thomas Jefferson "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." --- James Madison "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." --- John Adams

Moral decline has proceeded the fall of every civilization in history. Obama developed a strategic relationship with the most morally bankrupt segments of our society in a thinly viewed efforts to buy votes and campaign contributions!

Just when I thought he could sink no lower morally, he appointed the “king of gay pornography” to his finance committee, patted him on his back and said you are doing a great job!

OBAMA is LIKE A DARK CLOUD OF EVIL HANGING OVER OUR SOCIETY!

you tell em Jr., any knowledgable person know's only Republicans are racist, Democrats never owned slaves, and Abraham Lincoln was a democrat. friggen idiot.

He'd be rolling in his grave if he could. There's no way he could imagine our country the way it is today. Abortion on demand, clumsy oafs suing for spilling hot coffee on themselves, 47 million getting food stamps, welfare with no work requirements, etc. Hard work was the ethos of the time. 2nd Thessalonians 3:10 ...If any one will not work, let him not eat. (RSV) We've devolved to such a low level of thinking & morality. First we took prayer out of schools, then abortion was legalized. Next, the "free love" generation started having kids. Now kids can barely write or comprehend a sentence. Our President LIES,LIES,LIES & his followers eat it up, with laughter. SICK. I could never have imagined when I was young that so many people in our country would have no ethics at all. The concerns are for their next playdate with someone. Abuse of children is horrific. Drug use of heroin is ever increasing. Crack babies grow into youngsters who are in regular classrooms causing disruptions, making it difficult for others to learn, even if they were so inclined. Too much is at stake. If you read all the way through this, I think you'll vote for a man who doesn't lie all day to get votes.

"Religion is the Opiate of the people"

"Religion has been the greatest cause of human suffering in the history of humanity."

"Religion stifles creativity"

"Religion is dogmatic and autocratic."

"Religion is creates mindless zombies."

"Religion invents human torturing devices."

"Religion inhibits progress."

"Religion is mythology."

"Religion is a crutch for not dealing with reality."

"Religion is superstition."

"Religion is the lazy way out of understanding natural occurrences."

"Religion is totalitarian."

"Religion is for the insecure."

"Religion promotes pedophiles."

"Religion promotes perverted men."

"Religion degrades women."

"Religion subjugates women."

"Religion justifies human torture."

"Religion justifies human slavery."

"Religion brainwashes the weak minded."

"Religion robs people of their money."

"Religion supports a society of charlatans."

Man, religion just plain sucks...........

The Whig Party candidate, Zachary Taylor, won the presidential election of 1848. The Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, is forgotten. Martin Van Buren, a former president and the Free Soil Party candidate, placed third.

The Republican Party did not exist in 1848. There had been a different party called "Republican" or "Democratic-Republican" from about 1790 to about 1836, but that party's story will be covered separately.

The exact founding of the Republican Party is disputed, but aspects of the party were in existence around 1852 and its founding convention was on July 6, 1854 at Jackson, Michigan., In the fall of 1854 it elected 40 members to the U.S. House of Representatives (more if you count representatives co-nominated by the American and Republican parties). By the elections of 1856 it had gone from third party status to being the main rival of the Democrats.

What happened between 1848 and 1854 that could create a full-blown political party in so short a time? There were two main causes: the slavery issue and the rise and fall of the American Party, mistakenly called the Know-Nothing Party. Like the Republican Party, the American Party came into existence quickly and elected a large number of officials; it had the most members of any political party in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1854.

The Whigs, the number 2 party since the 1820's, had been formed in opposition to the Democrats as led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The party was not formed around any particular principles. Led originally by Henry Clay, it was a loose coalition of men who sought office for any of a number of reason. In the north it included abolitionists and people opposed to the expansion of slave territories, and those favoring protective, high tariffs (customs duties); in the south it favored slavery and lower tariffs. This worked fine until about 1850, but the renewed struggle over extending slavery to new western states and territories demanded that men chose sides. The southern Whigs deserted the party to join the Democrats, who were clearly the party of slavery. The northern Whigs mostly hopped on the American Party on their way to becoming Republicans.

But the core of the Republican Party appears to have evolved from the Free Soil Party. It had grown out of the free soil movement, which stood against extensions of slavery. The failure of the Whigs to take a stand, as a national party, against extending slavery left a political opening which the Free Soil Party filled. They also attracted anti-slavery northern Democrats. An important part of their platform was free homesteads for settlers from federal lands. Their slogan was "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Though they did not, as a party, advocate abolishing slavery in the southern states, their party was closest to an abolitionist view. In 1848 their presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, ran a distant third but received 291,623 votes. They sent two Senators and fourteen Representatives to Congress. In 1852 they ran John P. Hale for president, but received only 155,825 votes. Around 1852 they merged into the Republican Party.

The American Party was formed primarily as an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic group. Its recruits came mostly from the Whig Party, though many Democrats joined as well. Founded as a secret organization, so secret they came to be called "Know Nothings," they did not come out as the American Party until after their great successes in local and congressional elections of 1854. In 1856 Millard Filmore was their presidential candidate, gaining 8974,534 votes, one of the best third-party showings in U.S. history. But they were divided by the slavery issue, and by 1858 most American Party adherents in the north merged into the Republican Party, while in the south they rejoined the Democrats.

Though not a separate party, the abolitionists were an important component in creating the Republican Party. The idea of abolishing slavery was old; it had been declared abolished in Great Britain by the Somerset Decision of 1771, which helped precipitate the American Revolution. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies in 1833 also put Americans on a low moral footing. The debates about extending slavery to the western territories and new states made everyone in America aware of the abolitionist stance.

Steps to Civil War

Five great events mark the U.S.'s progress towards the Civil War: the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, and the election of the first Republican President.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Maine to be admitted to the union as a free state and Missouri to be admitted as a slave state. Most of the remaining Louisiana Territory - actually the land of sovereign native Indian nations - that the nation's leaders planned to annex was declared to be free. It seemed that this would stop the spread of slavery. But the annexation of Texas in 1845 and then northern Mexico (now the U.S.'s southwestern states) in 1848 changed the political equation.

California was the most populous of the conquered lands and applied in 1849 to become a free state. That would give free states a majority in the Senate as well as the House; slavers feared it was the first step to political defeat. A fierce debate ensued in Congress in 1850, with compromise as the result. California was admitted as a free state, but New Mexico and Utah were to decide for themselves if they wanted to allow slavery. In the District of Columbia the slave trade, but not slavery itself, was outlawed. And the most stringent Fugitive Slave Act ever was enacted.

The Fugitive Slave Act was very offensive to citizens in free states. Many people in the northern states who were not set on abolishing slavery in the south felt that if a slave escaped to a free state, they became free. It was a matter of states' rights and people's rights. Many of these citizens were driven into the abolitionist camp by the sight of escaped slaves being re-captured and by the prosecution of those who ran the Underground Railroad. They also lost interest in the Whig Party, which endorsed the Act along with the Democratic Party. This lead to the creation of the Free Soil Party, and eventually to the creation of the Republican Party

Kansas and Nebraska were the next Indian lands to be turned into states; they were to be free states under the Compromise of 1850. But in 1854 Stephen A. Douglas, a leading Democrat, proposed that instead the citizens in those territories be allowed to choose for themselves whether to be free or slave states. The pro-slavery Democrats had the votes to put the plan, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, through. The Whigs and the new American Party did nothing to stop it.

The abolitionists, free soilers, and those who wanted no extensions to slave territories (though they were willing, for the sake of keeping southern states in the Union, to allow slavery to continue where it already existed), needed a new party. They chose not to try to reform the Democrats, Whigs, or American Party. The Republican Party was born alive and kicking in 1854.

But, like the American Party and the Whigs, the Republican Party might have disappeared quickly if it had not been for the ongoing debate (and in Kansas, what amounted to a civil war) over slavery. The final straw that tipped the northern states against the long tradition of Democratic Party power was the Dred Scott Decision. It is important to recall that the American Constitution legalized slavery at the time the British Parliament was debating abolishing the slave trade. It was individual states that outlawed slavery. Since state-rights was an accepted political doctrine until the Civil War, for the most part this going-against the pro-slavery Constitution had been tolerated by the slavers who controlled southern state governments.

Dred Scott hoped that the result of his case would be like the Somerset decision had been in England. It would make clear that stepping onto free soil made you a free man. But the Supreme Court, dominated by Democratic Party appointees, declared that Dred Scott remained the private property of his owners. They went further, implying that no state had the right to deny a citizen the right to put his private property, including slaves, anywhere he saw fit. The Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1857. Republican Party candidates for local office and the House of Representatives dominated the elections in northern states in 1858.

Presidential Elections of 1856 and 1860

In 1856 the Republican Party overtook the Whig Party to become the great rival of the Democratic Party. But it was not simply a reformed and renamed Whig Party. The Whigs had been a national party; the Republicans were almost all in the non-slave states. The Whig Party had been political largely in the sense that it was a grouping of people who sought government offices; the Republican Party was a party of principles, a party that took positions on a variety of issues and promised to change the laws of the land in fundamental ways.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan for president in 1856. The Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who used the "free soil, free labor, free speech, free men" slogan for his campaign. The American Party and the Whigs both nominated ex-president Millard Fillmore. Buchanan won well less than half the popular vote, but took a large majority in the Electoral Collage (1,838,169 and 174). Fremont received the second largest number of citizen votes and votes in the Electoral College (1,341, 264 and 114). Fillmore placed third with a substantial number of popular votes but won only Maryland (874,534 and 8).

The congressional elections of 1858 were heavily influenced by popular reaction to the Dred Scott decision. The American Party and Whigs continued their declines. The Democrats, though still a national party, were increasingly identified with slavery. The Republicans continued to strengthen their role in free-state politics.

The presidential election of 1860 is one of the most interesting in American history. The Whig-American-Republican grouping had lost the presidency in 1856 because their vote was divided. Yet the Democrats divided their vote in 1860. The reason was simple: the voters had become passionate about the issue of slavery. In fact, with slavers fighting anti-slavery militias in Kansas, and John Brown having conducted his anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, they were doing more than just voting about the issue. The Republicans were all against slavery, though a large majority of the party were willing to allow it to continue to exist in the southern slave states if its expansion was stopped and slaves became free when they stepped on free state soil (reversing the Dred Scott decision). The Democrats divided into two factions, basically southern and northern factions. Stephen Douglas was the mainstream, northern Democrat; his position was to let each state decide whether to allow slavery or not. That was not good enough for the more radical slave masters, who nominated John Breckinridge on a platform of extending slavery. The remnants of the southern Whig and American parties merged into yet another party, the Constitutional Union Party. Nominating John Bell, they emphasized the need to preserve the union, going to great lengths to take no stand on slavery or its extension.

While the Constitutional Union Party candidate split off some votes that might otherwise have gone to Lincoln, the Democrat vote was much more closely divided. As a result, though he only received 40% of the popular vote (1,866,452), Abraham Lincoln received 180 Electoral College votes, compared to 123 total for the other 3 candidates. All of Lincoln's Electoral College votes came from free states, that is, from northern states plus California and Oregon.

Civil War

Passion often makes for bad judgment, and the slavers proceeded to make a series of mistakes that forced Lincoln and the Republicans to abolish slavery.

When 1861 dawned, with Lincoln soon to be inaugurated, the slavers actually still held the political upper hand. The majority of Supreme Court justices were pro-slavery. Republicans did not have a majority in either house of Congress. To abolish slavery would require a constitutional amendment, which could be blocked by one-quarter of the states; slavers controlled almost one half of the states.

Yet before Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated on March 4, 1861, 7 states announced they had seceded from the U.S. They joined together as the Confederate States of America, under the leadership of a leading member of the Democratic Party, Jefferson Davis.

Aside from the slavery issue, leading southern businessmen and politicians feared the Republicans for another reason. Some Republican politicians, including Lincoln, a former lawyer for the railroads, were backed by northern businessmen, in particular the owners of railroad and manufacturing corporations. Cotton growers feared higher protective tariffs on imported manufactured goods; the south was already deeply indebted to northern bankers and merchants.

Another mistake of the southerners was not taking the matter to the Supreme Court. It is very possible that the Supreme Court, with 5 southern members on it, would have ruled that states have a right to secede. But to admit that the Supreme Court had any jurisdiction over them was as galling to the southern secessionists as it was to the northern abolitionists who evaded the Fugitive Slave laws and Dred Scott ruling.

Not content to rule over a greatly diminished United States, the Republican Party and others who opposed secession (many northern Democrats were pro-slavery but anti-secession) forced a civil war upon the nation. There were two important effects of the Civil War upon the Republican Party (aside from the lasting effects of winning the war).

First, it became the party of Big Government and high taxes. It favored a centralized national government over state and local governance. The Republican war effort required high taxes to pay for men and their supplies, and that supported the industrialization process that went along with war. It became closely tied to northern manufacturing interests, which included a greatly enlarged class of millionaires created by war profiteering. Second, it took on the virtuous role of favoring the abolition of slavery and the improvement of the lives of economically deprived citizens, both Negro and those of European descent. This role is highlighted by the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided free land to western settlers.

These two roles corresponded to two ‘wings" of the party, the moderate wing and the Radical Republicans.

It was the Radical Republicans who supported the Confiscation Act (freeing the slaves of soldiers fighting the union), the Emancipation Proclamation, which was intended to abolish slavery in the confederate states, and the 13th Amendment, which did abolish slavery in the re-united states. They also pushed for the established the Freedmen's Bureau.

The Negro Wing of the Republican Party

In order to remain President in a war-weary nation, in the 1864 contest the Republicans had combined with pro-union, pro-war Democrats into the Union Party. Lincoln had taken Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his Vice-Presidential running mate. When Lincoln was assassinated the country suddenly had a Democrat for president and a Republican Congress led by the Radical Republicans. They denied the now-defeated southern former-slavers the right to sit in Congress; set up the Committee on Reconstruction to rule the southern states; and fought with President Johnson to the point of attempting to impeach him.

In 1866 and 1868 Negro voters helped elect Republican congresses and a new Republican President, Ulysses S. Grant. Radical Republican control of Congress resulted in all male Americans, regardless of their origins or skin color, receiving the right to vote upon passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. The former slave states also remained under military occupation until new state constitutions, written to the liking of Radical Republicans, were in place.

White southerners, with few exceptions, became even more solidly identified with the Democratic Party. Many could not run for office or vote because of their records as traitors. Freed slaves, with few exceptions, joined the Republican Party, giving it a presence in the south for the first time. Many Negroes were elected to local and state offices. For the ex-slavers the situation was intolerable, and the solution was terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist wing of the southern Democratic Party. In locality after locality, then state after state, former slaves were scared away from voting, and then from even being registered to vote. Until the Great Depression most black Americans would be Republicans; in the South they would constitute most of the Republican Party. However, after 1876 few black Americans were able to vote in the southern states. As a result black politicians could not be elected to office; in the South no Republicans could be elected to office at all; and the influence of blacks within the national party was minimal.

Wall Street Republicans

Starting with the civil war and accelerating into the 20th century the United States economy was rapidly industrialized. Even the agricultural economy was being mechanized, so that fewer people's labor sufficed to grow and harvest bountiful crops of wheat and corn. Displaced farmers migrated to the towns and cities. Even food came to be processed in great factories. Corporations were the main form of organization of the large-scale business that grew during this period. Much of politics of the era consisted of struggles between the wealthy, who owned stock in the corporations, and those who labored for wages, ran smaller businesses, or continued to farm on a small scale. Since the Republican Party both dominated the national government and dominated the northern state governments where manufacturing was concentrated, controlling the party was important to the men of great wealth. By using their wealth to support the campaigns of politicians, who in turn used all their power to help their donors, wealthy Americans came to dominate the Republican Party. Radical Republicans lost elections to business-sponsored candidates, and the business of the Republican Party came to be protecting corporate interests. After this point we may refer to the controlling elite of the Republican Party as Wall Street Republicans.

In 1872 a group of anti-corruption minded Republicans formed the Liberal Republican party and nominated newspaper editor Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate. The Democrats, eager to rebuild their party, decided to nominate Greeley as well. But with Grant still a war hero, the Democrats still the party of treason, and many black Americans still able to vote, it was any easy victory for Grant. Two demands of the Liberal Republicans were adopted by the mainstream Republicans. Except for 500 ex-confederate leaders, former rebels had their voting rights, and their right to run for office, restored. Civil service reform was also attempted.

The Presidential election of 1876 provides a good view of the changing social and political landscape. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes. The Klan had done its job: the Democrats swept the southern states excepting two remaining under military governance, South Carolina and Louisiana, plus Florida, then a sparsely populated state with only 4 electoral votes. The winner was disputed in those three states. After much bargaining Hayes was given the Presidency, but only after he promised to pull the remaining federal troops out of the South and, effectively, to do nothing about the disenfranchisement of black voters by the Democratic Party.

Despite more charges of corruption and economic hard times, the Republicans were able to hold onto majorities in Congress until the mid-term elections of 1882. The Democrat's combination of having a Protestant, white-racist wing in the south and a Catholic, immigrant-based, urban wing in the North, was proving to be too powerful for the Republicans. In 1884 the Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland in another close election. But for wealthy men and their corporations, this was not a problem; they controlled both parties quite effectively. The Supreme Court was filled with former corporate lawyers; it could be relied on to overrule state legislature or even a Congress that went against corporate wishes. With both parties dominated by business, a new movement arose. The Farmers Alliance, the Populist Party, labor unions, anarchism, and socialism all were important components of American politics in the late 1880's.

It is important to note that the average Republican voter of the era was not rich, corrupt, or mean-spirited. Most Republicans were farmers, tradesmen, or factory workers who had fought with the Union during the Civil War. They believed in hard work and honest business dealings; they were assets to their communities. Often they voted Republican because the only other choice was to vote Democrat. When offered an honest politician to vote for, or a Progressive Republican candidate, they usually availed themselves to the opportunity. Corporate domination of the Republican Party was carried out in backrooms and by creating a party machine that would see that corporate-friendly candidates were nominated.

Sugar, Hanna, McKinley and War

Many businessmen had great influence in politics at the end of the 19th century, but most were content with high tariffs (customs taxes on imported manufactured goods) and freedom from regulations. The Sugar Trust, however, took control of United States politics for profit to a new level: it required war, and it got war.

A prelude to the main show was provided by Hawaii, where a treaty had granted U.S. rights to a naval base in Pearl harbor in 1887. In 1893, aided by U.S. troops, American sugar cane growers overthrew the native government and asked for Hawaii to be annexed to the United States. But by the time a bill for that was ready in the U.S. Senate, Grover Cleveland had been elected President. He sent a commission to Hawaii that found most Hawaiians wanted to remain independent. No further action was taken until after a much bigger sugar fight.

Sugar magnate Henry Havemeyer had a few problems even after he became fabulously rich and the controlling person in the Sugar Trust. His factories turned raw cane sugar into the crystal white powder that had been a mainstay of world trade for centuries. Not only was very little sugar cane grown in the U.S. (mostly in Louisiana), but some U.S. farmers wanted to grow and refine sugar beets to compete with cane. What the Sugar Trust needed was cheap, untaxed imports of raw sugar, but very high tariffs on competing imported refined sugar. Congress was willing to go along (Havemeyer had perfected the stock-tip bribe: Senators could get rich quick by simply buying and selling sugar trust stock on Havemeyer's instructions) on the high tariffs for imported refined sugar, but Louisiana Senators vigorously opposed low tariffs on raw sugar.

Various interests in the U.S. had long coveted Cuba and other islands in Spain's American empire. Havemeyer determined to buy himself a President and a war. While it is well known that Mark Hanna raised vast sums of money to insure William McKinley triumphed over Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 Presidential election, the role of the Sugar Trust in that election has been overlooked. McKinley owed Havemeyer a war; many American expansionists like Theodore Roosevelt wanted a war anyway. Delay was necessary only because Havemeyer needed to have Citibank buy up sugar plantations in Cuba and Puerto Rico that would become vastly more valuable after the war. Forget the explosion of the Maine: America was going to war regardless. McKinley made demands of the Spanish, had them met fully, and then made even more aggressive demands that no nation would find acceptable.

On April 11, 1898 McKinley asked Congress to declare war, and Democrats and Republicans alike were happy to do it. Spain had already lost the Philippines, excepting Manila, to native rebels, and was barely holding its own against Cuban rebels. On August 12, 1998, the Spanish signed an armistice. 500 Americans had died in battle, while 5000 had died of tropical diseases.

In the Philippines the defeat of the Spanish started an even greater war: one against the Filipino people themselves. They fought guerrilla style; probably 1,000,000 died, many of them civilians; and 4,324 American soldiers were killed. In 1901 the Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured. Most sugar plantations had new American owners. In 1942 the Japanese "liberated" the Philippines from the United States; in 1946, after driving out the Japanese, the U.S. finally allowed the Philippines to become an independent nation.

Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives

The heritage of the Radical and Liberal Republicans was partly buried by the rise of the powerful, corporate and increasingly conservative business wing of the party. But the same economic, technical and cultural changes that affected the entire nation affected the ordinary Republican citizens who often had much input into local politics even when corrupt men occupied higher office.

As the 20th century dawned the reform movement became a tidal wave. A number of streams of citizens' demands came together and fed into each other. Even some demands of socialists gained an audience among Republicans who had felt the brunt of the predatory tactics of the gigantic business corporations. Writers, including the muckrakers, novelists writing books like Frank Norris's The Octopus about Republican farmers being crushed by Republican railroad barons, and non-fiction like Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, had a notable influence on the Republican faithful. The financial panic of 1907 also undermined people's belief in the infallibility of the free market.

Anger at the patent drug industry, the alcohol industry, and the food industry was widespread. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, had become President in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated. Though he had been a promoter of the Spanish-American and then the Philippine-American wars, and was from a very wealthy family, Roosevelt had shown concern for the plight of the poor when serving as New York police commissioner. During Roosevelt's presidency the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed in 1906. The conservation on national forests had started under Republican President Harrison in 1891; but Roosevelt pushed hard on this issue. He placed some 125 million acres in federal reserves, about 3 times the total of all of his predecessors.

While the reformers, known as the Progressive Movement, could be found in both political parties (and in third parties), they had more influence, during this period, in the Republican Party. In addition to Roosevelt, well-known Progressive Republicans included governor Robert ("Fighting Bob") La Follette of Wisconsin, California's governor Hiram Johnson, and governor Charles Evans Hughs of New York State. Issues like getting the right of women to vote cut across party lines, with suffragettes in Republican states working within the Republican Party.

In 1911 the National Progressive Republican league was formed to oust President Taft and get a progressive in the White House. Roosevelt decided to head the progressives and won most of the Republican primaries in 1912. But Taft controlled a majority of delegates to the nominating convention and received the nomination.

The Progressives thought Teddy could beat both the Republicans and the Democrats, so they split and formed the Progressive Party. The Democrats nominated the racist, but otherwise posing as progressive, Woodrow Wilson. Of course Wilson won and the Republicans would not regain the Presidency until 1920.

Roaring Back in the 20's

The 1920's were a critical period for the Republican Party. While the party would contain a progressive or liberal wing until the 1970's, during the 1920's the Wall Street wing gained an ascendency which it never lost. Partly this was because of President Wilson's performance in office, which led to a landslide in 1920 for Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding over Democrat nominee James M. Cox. It was the first presidential election in which women could vote, and they voted Republican.

After a postwar recession the American economy continued the process of rapid industrialization. The European industrial powers had worn themselves out, but America had entered the war only after selling them vast amounts of arms and food. Because the U.S. had spent relatively little on the war, its taxes were relatively low, and manufacturers had a global competitive advantage. Harding appointed men who believed businesses needed no regulation to the agencies that were supposed to regulate business. An ardent anti-conservationist, Albert Fall, was appointed Secretary of Interior.

At the same time businessmen were terrified of the Communist revolution that had taken place in Russia (with failed attempts in several other countries). Conservative groups labeled anyone demanding any reform a communist. Of course there were actual communists, belonging to the American Communist Party, which took orders from Moscow, but most progressives wanted reforms through democratic change, not a dictatorship created by a bloody revolution.

While the economy grew, the stock market ran wild. Taxes on the rich were reduced by two-thirds by the sympathetic Republican Congress. Tariff's on imported goods were greatly increased, supporting prices American manufacturers could charge at the expense of farmers and consumers. Scandals were plentiful, notably the Teapot Dome scandal. Meanwhile organized businessmen made black-market profits selling alcohol to the thirsty, a business made possible by the passage of the Prohibition amendment in 1919.

Harding died in office of natural causes and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. Republicans had another fling with Progressive ideas in the 1924 election, when some split again from the main party and nominated Bob La Follette for President. Calvin Coolidge led the main party ticket. The Democrats nominated a conservative Wall Street lawyer, John W. Davis. This time the Republican split did not prevent a Republican landslide. But Cal only served one term. The Republican nominee in 1928 was Herbert Hoover.

It is difficult to imagine now how popular Herbert Hoover was in 1928. He and the Republicans were so popular it looked as if the Democratic Party might cease to exist. He had become famous during World War I for getting food to the starving in Belgium. He had a good record as Secretary of Commerce; a little too good for the crooked politicians and their businessmen friends. The Democrats nominated Al Smith, who was devoted to making alcohol legal again. That and his Catholicism made him unpopular even in the "solid South" where the Klan, the backbone of the Democratic Party, was almost as anti-Catholic as it was anti-Negro.

Hoover received 21,391,381 votes to Smith's 15,016,443. Smith carried only the 5 solidest states of the Solid South. Hoover was sworn in as President on March 4, 1929. No one knew it then, but the stock market had already peaked.

The Great Depression and a Half-century in the Minority

The exodus of farmers, especially tenant farmers and laborers, for factory jobs continued during the 1920s. Agriculture had not prospered with the rest of the economy during the 1920's. Hoover tried to help by signing the Agricultural Marketing Act in June of 1929. It established a Farm Board that hoped to raise prices of agricultural products. But farmer's unsold surpluses were so large that it never achieved its goals.

By October of 1929 the stock market was down noticeably, though the economy itself was still going strong. Savvy investors like Joseph Kennedy were selling their stocks for cash. Confidence in quick paper stock profits began to wain, and then everyone wanted the paper profits they had accumulated in the 1920's converted to cash on the same day, October 29, 1929. Many speculators had borrowed money to play the market; they were forced to sell their stocks to cover the debts in their margin accounts.

The beloved free-market religion of the most ardent business Republican's had failed (the truest believers blamed the failure on government meddling, the very Devil in their world view). Suddenly realizing they were much poorer, stock speculators cut back on spending. Banks, panicking, called in loans. Demand for goods and services fell, businesses laid off workers, and consumption fell even further.

Herbert Hoover was President when it happened, and Herbert Hoover continued as President until the beginning of 1933. Though Hoover tried various measures, often Congress failed to support him (Republicans because they did not believe in government meddling in business, Democrats because they were delighted to see the nation blame Republicans for the problems). Among the measures tried by Hoover were public projects like the Boulder Dam, creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Norris-La Guardia Act that essentially legalized organizing labor unions.

The Democrats won the Congressional (and state and local) elections of 1930, then the Presidency in 1932. In a few short years the Republicans had gone from being the majority party to the minority party.

It is important to note that progressive "liberal" Republicans gained many important positions, notably in Congress, during the Depression years. Many of the acts that are now associated with the Democratic Party, such as Social Security, were in fact passed with broad support from both parties.

Not only would the "business" wing of the Republican Party need decades to see their party have an equal footing with the Democrats, but they would have to work together with a liberal/Progressive wing that had far more influence inside the party.

Towards the end of World War II and during Truman's presidency in particular the Republican Party gained mainly through some voters' irritation at the party in power. In 1946, for instance, the Republicans briefly had a majority in Congress. This success was capped with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President in 1952. But the former WWII commander was much more popular than the party he headed. Eisenhower won by a landslide, but the Republicans barely managed majorities in Congress. An important change took place in the South, however. Florida, Texas and Tennessee went for Eisenhower; the Republican Party began to acquire the southern constituency it would turn to for success after the 1960's.

Eisenhower's Republicans were content to undo what they saw as the most excessive New Deal legacies, such as wage and price controls, but left such programs as Social Security intact. They favored less government-held electricity creation and allowed corporations to begin building nuclear power plants. The economy was again expanding of its own accord, pumped up by a rising birth rate (the baby boom), exports (again, Europe lay prostrate), and pent-up demand from WWII and Korean War era rationing. America still liked Ike in 1956, but the Democrats still held their own in Congress.

Richard Nixon was Ike's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1956 and played an important role within the administration. He was fiercely patriotic and anti-communist, but also adamant that black Americans in the South should be treated as full citizens. In 1954 the Supreme Court, mainly appointed during the New Deal years, declared segregated (by race) schools to be illegal, even if the schools were truly "separate but equal." Southern Democrats and the Klan opposed, sometimes with violence, the integration of southern public schools. In one incident Eisenhower, at Nixon's urging, had to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Democratic governor Faubus tried to prevent the enrollment of "Negro" (the term used in that era) children. The Civil Rights bill of 1957, the first since Reconstruction, was passed with support from Republicans and northern Democrats.

In 1960, allegedly using massive fraud in Illinois, the Democrats won back the presidency by a hair. During the 1960's the Republicans struggled to remain relevant. Blacks enrolling to vote in the formerly segregated southern states forgot that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and the Democrats were the party of Lynching. African-Americans would be the most reliable component of the Democratic party for the remaining decades of the 20th century, and they tipped the scales strongly against the Republicans.

Nixon and Revival

After Vice-President Richard Nixon lost his bid for the Presidency in 1960, what then passed as the ultra-conservative wing gained control of the party. They nominated Barry Goldwater for President in 1964; Lyndon Johnson, who had become President after Kennedy was assassinated, crushed Goldwater in the polls. But Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident and involved the U.S. in a new land war in Asia, in Vietnam. He lost the support of anti-war Democrats, then decided not to run in 1968.

The Republicans next moved back to a centrist, Richard M. Nixon, for their Presidential nominee. The Democrats nominated another centrist, Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President. The Democrats under Johnson had extended the New Deal to include what were called Great Society social welfare programs, also known as the War on Poverty. Nixon held to the traditional Republican belief that the only viable way out of poverty was hard work; programs appropriate in a Great Depression were not needed in the booming economy of 1960's America. Enough working class and middle class Americans agreed with him to elect him President. But the country was still Democratic; both houses of Congress had Democratic majorities, so Nixon had to gain some votes from Democratic congressmen to get his ideas enacted.

Richard Nixon had several remarkable achievements in office. In foreign policy Nixon recognized that Communism was not monolithic. By forging an alliance with Communist China he accelerated the breakup of the communist block countries and helped China regain its status as a great civilization. In domestic policy Nixon realized that the world had changed and that certain reforms had to be put into place to deal with those changes. Notably he signed into law the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In politics Nixon was able to see how the Republican Party might become a majority party again. As the more conservative of the two parties, and in particular the party favoring more individual initiative and less taxes, it was natural that it should find a way to break up the Democratic Party's monopoly in the southern states. The 1972 presidential election would demonstrate that strategy could work.

The War in Vietnam was the biggest issue in the 1972 election. The Democrats nominated George McGovern, who wished to withdraw from Vietnam and was very much in favor of extending New Deal and Great Society programs. The more conservative Democratic Party bosses, though temporarily unable to boss the grassroots around, nevertheless undermined McGovern's campaign. The new black voters for McGovern were counter-weighted by white, conservative, working and middle-class voters, especially in the south, voting Republican for the first time. Nixon won every state but Massachusetts, but the Democrats still held control of Congress.

There may have been an element of racism in the South when white voters began voting for Republican candidates, and later even changed their party registration. After all, blacks were now Democrats. But the main reason white voters switched was because most had little desire, themselves, for social welfare programs. Religion played a role too; the Republican Party was traditionally Protestant, as were white southern voters. These southern voters were also very anti-communist; the Democrats, and McGovern in particular, appeared to be soft on Communism.

But Richard Nixon had made a serious error in judgment on two points. Despite his great achievements, Watergate and the Vietnam War would destroy his reputation. In Vietnam he underestimated how badly the Vietnamese wanted to be free from American domination. No matter how much he threatened, no matter what horrible weapons he unleashed on the people of Vietnam, they continued to fight. Expanding the war into Cambodia backfired, strengthening the Cambodian Communists. Finally Nixon had to negotiate a withdrawal of American troops; after a face-saving period of time, the Communists took control of all of Vietnam. As a result Nixon lost the support of the militarists, who blamed him for losing a war, and of the pacifists, who blamed him for prosecuting it before losing it.

His second great error was unleashing his "dirty tricks" team on the Democrats. In retrospect he would have won the 1972 election easily by simply running an honest campaign. But the dirty-tricks gang was caught burglering the offices of the Democrats in the Watergate Hotel. Nixon tried to cover up his role in the affair, but a committee of Congress kept investigating until Nixon was compelled to resign to avoid impeachment. Since Vice-President Agnew had resigned due to a scandal in 1973, the new Vice-President, Gerald Ford, became the new President of the United States.

The Watergate scandal and disillusionment after the loss of the war in Vietnam temporarily stopped the Republican party's growth. Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon a pardon, but the voters would not pardon Gerald when he ran for President in 1976. The Democrats, worried about their eroding base in the South, nominated a moderate Georgia former governor, Jimmy Carter, and regained the White House.

Reagan and Resurgence

But in the 1976, 1978, and 1980 elections the tendency of the country to realign around the parties on a new basis continued, with the results most visible in the south, where many formerly Democratic voters and elected politicians switched to being Republicans. The conservative wing of the Democratic party was weakened by these defections to the Republicans.

Since the Great Depression the only way the Republicans had been able to get a President elected was by choosing a moderate candidate like Eisenhower or Nixon. That was about to change. The Goldwater Republicans had never given up. As memories of the Depression evaporated, and the results of the 60's drug culture became apparent, their appeal to conservative values and free-market ideology gained ground in the party and with voters. Republicans nominated ultra-conservative former movie actor (and former Governor of California) Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. Jimmy Carter ran for a second term. His defeat is usually attributed to an economic recession, post-Vietnam bad feelings, and the fall of an American puppet, the Shaw of Iran. During the election campaign the revolutionaries in Iran held U.S. consulate members hostage. Carter appeared to be weak and ineffective in dealing with the situation.

From 1932 until 1980 American politics were dominated by the Democratic Party and the idea that the main purpose of government is social welfare and economic expansion through increasing the incomes (and spending) of the working class. Since 1980 (up until this essay is being written in 2005) politics has been dominated by the Republican Party and the idea that the main purposes of government is providing order and economic expansion through increasing the profits of business enterprises. Generally, voters have been happy with economic expansion no matter what the cause (and unhappy with stagnation or decline).

It was called the Reagan Revolution but in fact the Reagan era kept most of the New Deal and Great Society programs, though some were scaled back. It was in foreign policy that Reagan made the most dramatic changes. He escalated the cold war, not by an actual attack, but by increasing military spending to a degree that the Communist block countries could not match. He also found methods, some of them of questionable legality, to undermine socialist and left wing governments, in particular that of Nicaragua. These strategies cumulated (after Reagan left office) in the breaking away of the Eastern European states from Soviet dominance starting with Poland. A regime change in Russia and the breakup of the Soviet union followed.

While domestic policies ended the Reagan era little changed, the positive experience of having an expanding economy and victory over communism greatly strengthened not only the credibility of the Republican Party with American voters, but also the dominance of the conservative wing within the Republican Party.

The Christian Right and Newt Gingrich

In 1988 in the Republican presidential primaries television evangelist Pat Robertson began as a strong contender but withdrew from the race after his claim to have been in combat as a marine in the Korean War was shown to be false. George Bush, Reagan's Vice-President, became the Republican nominee and then President of the United States. He one-term presidency was characterized by a war against Iraq following the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, an oil-rich kingdom on the Persian Gulf.

Despite its Presidential victories in 1980, 1984, and 1988, the Republican Party was still far behind the Democrats in registered voters. To the extent that the two parties were a reflection of economic classes (with a majority of welfare and working class families registered Democrat, a majority of upper-middle and upper class families registered Republican, and the lower-middle to middle-middle class up for grabs), the Republicans were in a corner. Pressing policies like deregulation, lower corporate taxes, and a lower inheritance tax, all highly desired by the dominant Wall Street clique within the party, might have eroded what support they did have among the less wealthy voters.

It was clear to party strategists, which is to say Wall Street Republicans, that they needed to find a way to get votes from people whose economic needs they did not serve. Their success in breaking up the Solid South, the bastion of the Democratic Party until the 1970s, pointed the way. They would take advantage of non-economic, cultural issues to bring into the Party a huge group of voters who were not motivated, or not very motivated, by Republican economic policies.

The target group was fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. Though found everywhere in the nation, these individuals were most prevalent in the former Confederate states. They included some, but not all, Southern Baptists. Politically they had often been apathetic, with low voter turn outs for elections. But that was changing. A set of issues was chosen that would appeal to them, and with the financial backing of Wall Street republicans, a new set of political and religious leaders emerged. Pat Robertson has already been mentioned; other leaders included Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority, and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. The issues that mobilized this movement were demands to make abortions (and even birth control) illegal; to allow or enforce prayer in public schools; and to make the Bible a basis for law.

While this new Religious Right, as it was called, helped elect President Bush in 1988, the alliance was insufficient to give him a victory in 1992. For eight years Democrat Bill Clinton would sit in the White House, but he was under siege from the Republicans, who gained majorities in the House of Representatives starting in 1994. This was the heyday of radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who managed to direct people's anger against Bill Clinton, his first lady, Hillary, and all things "Liberal." Rush's show, spiked with humor at Democrats' expense, was the most popular show on radio. The Republican representatives in Congress were led by Newt Gingrich, who in the 1994 campaigns introduced the Contract with America. This avoided some big, divisive issues like school prayer and gun control. Instead it focused on reforming how Congress operated, tax cuts, tort (lawsuit) reform, and welfare reform (decreasing payments and eligibility).

Moments of Triumph: George W. Bush and the 2000 and 2004 elections

Despite having, or perhaps because of having, Bill Clinton in the White House, the period between 1992 and 2000 saw solid gains for the Republicans in Congress and at the local level. Focusing on cultural issues and promises to cut taxes was paying off.

The Democrats nominated Bill Clinton's Vice-President, Al Gore, for the Presidency in 2000. After a fierce primary struggle George W. Bush, one of the sons of former President George Bush and recently governor of Texas, won the Republican nomination. The Bush family had ties to Wall Street and in particular the petrochemical industry, but so did the Gore family. With little to distinguish the two candidates, and with the Christian Right as campaign foot soldiers, George W. Bush squeaked to a victory. The election was so close that a dispute arose over who had won in the state of Florida, where Jeb Bush, George's brother, was governor. Whoever won in the state would receive its Electoral College votes and win the Presidency. After a lengthy legal dispute the Supreme Court of the United States, voting 5 to 4 on strictly partisan lines, decided in Bush's favor.

With many American's wondering if George W. Bush had fairly won the election, Bush set about his agenda. The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court; it was the first time since 1928 that Republicans controlled all the branches of government. Before President Bush could do much to implement his agenda, however, the Al Quada attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took place on September 1, 2001. The stock market, overheated because the Federal Reserve had kept interest rates too low during the boom (sometimes called the Internet Bubble) of the late 1990's, plummeted, and the rest of the economy quickly followed.

The Republicans had come to be in charge just in time for another disaster that might make them look like Herbert Hoovers and lead to decades of Democratic Party rule. But George W. Bush was no Hoover. He responded vigorously to the Al Quada attack by invading Afghanistan. He secured a future supply of oil for the United States by invading Iraq after falsely claiming Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Rather than increasing social programs to help the country out of the recession, he pushed through tax cuts (that had been planned by Republicans for decades) that favored large businesses, heirs to fortunes, upper-middle class and upper class Americans. While this created a huge federal deficit, it did help revive the economy when combined with the Federal Reserve's lowering of interest rates.

The American voters rewarded George W. Bush and the Republicans by returning them to office in the 2004 elections (Bush's own victory was narrow; he received 62 million votes to Democrat John Kerry's 59 million). This is particularly remarkable given the both the poor performance of the American economy during his first term and the deterioration of employee and small business incomes. Many of the better paying jobs were moved overseas, and the destruction of small, independently owned retailers was particularly fast in this period.

At the time of the writing of this pamphlet, George W. Bush is President of the United States, the Republicans control a majority of the states, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Agree with them or not, that is a major accomplishment for a political party.

At the same time, the Wall Street Republicans appear to be losing control of the party to the religious Republicans. So far the religious Republicans have supported the Wall Street program of reducing taxes on the rich (the capital gains tax, dividend tax, estate tax, and upper-income bracket taxes). But the anger of lower-class Republican voters is fueled as much by economic failure as by cultural values. There is a great potential for backlash against Wall Street, which was given its wish-list. In contrast the promises to make the cultural changes that motivated lower-class citizens to vote with the Republicans have not been met.

The triumph of the religious Republicans within the party might jeopardize the allegiance of the moderate Republicans who are not homosexual bashers or believers in the rapture; who might actually believe that women have a right to contraceptives, abortion, and divorce; or who realize that the same science that makes NASCAR racers run and allows people to watch the races on TV also is absolutely certain that species evolved through mutations and natural selection. Just as American's demanded Prohibition and then revolted against it when they got it, actually banning abortion, contraception, and divorce; forcing every child in America to pray in school from the Evangelical prayer-book; and returning the TV to a 1950's-style sexual innocence, would almost certainly drive voters to elect less puritanical politicians. Which party might come out ahead in that backlash would depend on how the various parties position themselves.

I recognize your first quote as Marx, who never impressed me. In your other quotes, who are you quoting?

Hey "President of the U.S.A., are you "OK" ??????????

Good luck with that !!!!!

PAUL RYAN PLAN KILLS SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID, TAKES AWAY FOOD STAMPS FROM STARVING CHILDREN AND FAMILES AND CUTS BENEFITS TO VETERANS.

These cuts are all designed to privatize the programs in order to give the rich 1% access to the money as middle men. Reaping in profits causing higher prices and less service. Ryan gives these cuts in social programs from the needy to the rich 1% like Romney in the form of tax cuts.....tax cuts to the rich while taking food from starving familes and cutting benefits to veterans.

HOW MUCH MORE GREED $$$$$$$ HAS TO GO TO THE GREEDY RICH LIKE ROMNEY AND RYAN?

Vote for president Obama/Biden and Team America 2012 Protect the middle class.

Unfortunately, the dumbing down of America is well under way. Many American’s, especially liberals, have become self-absorbed and intellectually handicapped by a sort of “fast food style
decision making process” driven primarily by short sound bites of single issue constituency rhetoric.

Respected Democratic presidents such as JFK would roll over in their grave if they could see what Obama has done to our country and to the once proud Democratic party.

STOP OBAMA NOW!

ClearVoice2'

Let's see, Romney's primary supporting demographics are uneducated, white men. So, you're right there's a dumbing down of America. It's just what the right wing lunatics want -- mindless zombies. How else can they convince them of all the BS they keep spouting.

confused-3012211

Your own handle confirms the nature of your problem! Undoubtedly, you were raised in a dysfunctional home, right!

Dysfunction in the home leads to emotional instability, mental illness and almost always gross narcissism. These are the ingredients that create liberals. Look at their agenda; abortion (killing of a human for convenience rather than being sexually responsible), gay marriage (confusion and perversion must be legalized and normalized), entitlements (the belief that you are owed something), socialization of more and more crap (no father in the home means the government should be the daddy).

Ryan says Romney was Bullying him !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks like the Party is over !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lying Ryan. "No vouchers". Hell taking money out of our pockets and giving it to greedy insurance companies is the centerpiece of Ryan's so called "medicare reform." Ryan would just prefer to put old folks on ice floes and tell them to "go fish!"

PAUL RYAN PLEDGES TO TAKE ECONOMY DOWN THE NIGHT PRESIDENT OBAMA TOOK OFFICE WITH 14 OTHER REPUBS, THEN WHEN RYAN AND REPUBS ARE SUCCESSFUL IN TRYING TO SLOW THE GROWTH OF ECONOMY, RIGHTIES BITCH ABOUT THE ECONOMY NOT GROWING FAST ENOUGH!

RYAN TAKES PLEDGE AGAINST AMERICA , TO VOTE AGAINST ANYTHING GOOD FOR AMERICA.

Tomasgrande posted this on 8-12-19....Notice Paul Ryan on the name list?

The "Mother of All Wars"

From the article above:

"This is a serious election, and it calls for serious candidates that have real solutions," McDonnell told moderator David Gregory on "Meet the Press." "The time for rhetoric is over."

Courtesy of Daily Kos,June 8, 2012

On January 20, 2009 Republican Leaders in Congress literally plotted to sabotage and undermine U.S. Economy during President Obama's Inauguration. In Robert Draper's book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives" Draper wrote that during a four hour, "invitation only" meeting with GOP Hate-Propaganda Minister, Frank Luntz, the below listed Senior GOP Law Writers literally plotted to sabotage, undermine and destroy America's Economy.

Frank Luntz - GOP Minister of Propaganda
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA),
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX),
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX),
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)
Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA),
Sen. Jim DeMint (SC-R),
Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ-R),
Sen. Tom Coburn (OK-R),
Sen. John Ensign (NV-R) and
Sen. Bob Corker (TN-R).Non-lawmakers present
Newt Gingrich

During the four hour meeting: The senior GOP members plotted to bring Congress to a standstill regardless how much it would hurt the American Economy by pledging to obstruct and block President Obama on all legislation.

Courtesy of the National Journal, October 25, 2010

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president

China and others have warned America and the world about the inherent risk in Obama policies, but it appears it will take yet another credit downgrade and perhaps a complete economic collapse for some Americans to wake up to the “harsh and frightening reality” of America’s future should Obama be reelected!

ROMNEY/RYAN 2012

nazarite,

I've read some crap on these blogs, but you take the cake. Want to talk about buying of votes. how about Grover Nordquist and his wealthy financiers. How do you justify elected congressmen giving their allegiance to a lobbyist? Lobbyist exist for one reason only--to serve their financing masters. For republicans to swear allegiance to a lobbyist, over their allegiance to America, is the worst crime of the land.

You need serious mental therapy. Don't wait too long. There are a limited number of cells in that feeble brain. Once they're all dead, it's over....

Nazerite , In May 1832, he was asked to appear at the first ever Democratic Convention but did not attend on account of poor health. Carroll died on November 14, 1832, in Baltimore. His funeral took place at the Baltimore Cathedral

Please take your copy-and-paste Gish Gallop elsewhere. Nobody is interested in your idiotic spam.

I then list you as a lying Obamanite, hater of america!

YOU ARE AN IDIOT!! Your views are so horribly biased----you should be the one to be on Comedy Network. You wouldn't get mnay laughs, but it would be FUN to "see" you get BOO'd!!!

Beyond the obvious moral decay accelerated at an exponential rate by this president, the economic damage he has done lays in wait like an iceberg on a dark ocean night. Ninety percent of risk is lurking below the surface and remains invisible to those consumed by this “fast food style decision making process” and short sound bites of single issue constituency rhetoric!

Obama induced debt (deficit spending) acts like a cancer on our nation and American society.
Cancer grows and cannot be contained without serious and often invasive treatment. The cure itself poses serious side effects. We can look to Greece as a sort of microcosm of what Obama is doing to America with what may go down in history as the “most reckless fiscal policy in the history of the industrialized world”.

STOP OBAMA NOW!!!

This is extremely biased, and very untrue for most. Those that I would believe, like don't pee toward mecca, are an extremely smart choice, since we are not fighting "Muslims" even though the majority of terrorists are. It is EXTREMELY disrespectful and just shows that you nothing of other people.

Four year of living from check to check some are so and lucky what dose Obama have in store for you he cant tell you,He can only call Romney a liar and make fun of his big bird comment.

Were the bills not good for America that he co-sponsored? The Catholic Church is learning not to get in bed with the liberals! You will get screwed!

Biden is too stupid to 'trap' anyone.

The Whig Party candidate, Zachary Taylor, won the presidential election of 1848. The Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, is forgotten. Martin Van Buren, a former president and the Free Soil Party candidate, placed third.

The Republican Party did not exist in 1848. There had been a different party called "Republican" or "Democratic-Republican" from about 1790 to about 1836, but that party's story will be covered separately.

The exact founding of the Republican Party is disputed, but aspects of the party were in existence around 1852 and its founding convention was on July 6, 1854 at Jackson, Michigan., In the fall of 1854 it elected 40 members to the U.S. House of Representatives (more if you count representatives co-nominated by the American and Republican parties). By the elections of 1856 it had gone from third party status to being the main rival of the Democrats.

What happened between 1848 and 1854 that could create a full-blown political party in so short a time? There were two main causes: the slavery issue and the rise and fall of the American Party, mistakenly called the Know-Nothing Party. Like the Republican Party, the American Party came into existence quickly and elected a large number of officials; it had the most members of any political party in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1854.

The Whigs, the number 2 party since the 1820's, had been formed in opposition to the Democrats as led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The party was not formed around any particular principles. Led originally by Henry Clay, it was a loose coalition of men who sought office for any of a number of reason. In the north it included abolitionists and people opposed to the expansion of slave territories, and those favoring protective, high tariffs (customs duties); in the south it favored slavery and lower tariffs. This worked fine until about 1850, but the renewed struggle over extending slavery to new western states and territories demanded that men chose sides. The southern Whigs deserted the party to join the Democrats, who were clearly the party of slavery. The northern Whigs mostly hopped on the American Party on their way to becoming Republicans.

But the core of the Republican Party appears to have evolved from the Free Soil Party. It had grown out of the free soil movement, which stood against extensions of slavery. The failure of the Whigs to take a stand, as a national party, against extending slavery left a political opening which the Free Soil Party filled. They also attracted anti-slavery northern Democrats. An important part of their platform was free homesteads for settlers from federal lands. Their slogan was "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Though they did not, as a party, advocate abolishing slavery in the southern states, their party was closest to an abolitionist view. In 1848 their presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, ran a distant third but received 291,623 votes. They sent two Senators and fourteen Representatives to Congress. In 1852 they ran John P. Hale for president, but received only 155,825 votes. Around 1852 they merged into the Republican Party.

The American Party was formed primarily as an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic group. Its recruits came mostly from the Whig Party, though many Democrats joined as well. Founded as a secret organization, so secret they came to be called "Know Nothings," they did not come out as the American Party until after their great successes in local and congressional elections of 1854. In 1856 Millard Filmore was their presidential candidate, gaining 8974,534 votes, one of the best third-party showings in U.S. history. But they were divided by the slavery issue, and by 1858 most American Party adherents in the north merged into the Republican Party, while in the south they rejoined the Democrats.

Though not a separate party, the abolitionists were an important component in creating the Republican Party. The idea of abolishing slavery was old; it had been declared abolished in Great Britain by the Somerset Decision of 1771, which helped precipitate the American Revolution. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies in 1833 also put Americans on a low moral footing. The debates about extending slavery to the western territories and new states made everyone in America aware of the abolitionist stance.

Steps to Civil War

Five great events mark the U.S.'s progress towards the Civil War: the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, and the election of the first Republican President.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Maine to be admitted to the union as a free state and Missouri to be admitted as a slave state. Most of the remaining Louisiana Territory - actually the land of sovereign native Indian nations - that the nation's leaders planned to annex was declared to be free. It seemed that this would stop the spread of slavery. But the annexation of Texas in 1845 and then northern Mexico (now the U.S.'s southwestern states) in 1848 changed the political equation.

California was the most populous of the conquered lands and applied in 1849 to become a free state. That would give free states a majority in the Senate as well as the House; slavers feared it was the first step to political defeat. A fierce debate ensued in Congress in 1850, with compromise as the result. California was admitted as a free state, but New Mexico and Utah were to decide for themselves if they wanted to allow slavery. In the District of Columbia the slave trade, but not slavery itself, was outlawed. And the most stringent Fugitive Slave Act ever was enacted.

The Fugitive Slave Act was very offensive to citizens in free states. Many people in the northern states who were not set on abolishing slavery in the south felt that if a slave escaped to a free state, they became free. It was a matter of states' rights and people's rights. Many of these citizens were driven into the abolitionist camp by the sight of escaped slaves being re-captured and by the prosecution of those who ran the Underground Railroad. They also lost interest in the Whig Party, which endorsed the Act along with the Democratic Party. This lead to the creation of the Free Soil Party, and eventually to the creation of the Republican Party

Kansas and Nebraska were the next Indian lands to be turned into states; they were to be free states under the Compromise of 1850. But in 1854 Stephen A. Douglas, a leading Democrat, proposed that instead the citizens in those territories be allowed to choose for themselves whether to be free or slave states. The pro-slavery Democrats had the votes to put the plan, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, through. The Whigs and the new American Party did nothing to stop it.

The abolitionists, free soilers, and those who wanted no extensions to slave territories (though they were willing, for the sake of keeping southern states in the Union, to allow slavery to continue where it already existed), needed a new party. They chose not to try to reform the Democrats, Whigs, or American Party. The Republican Party was born alive and kicking in 1854.

But, like the American Party and the Whigs, the Republican Party might have disappeared quickly if it had not been for the ongoing debate (and in Kansas, what amounted to a civil war) over slavery. The final straw that tipped the northern states against the long tradition of Democratic Party power was the Dred Scott Decision. It is important to recall that the American Constitution legalized slavery at the time the British Parliament was debating abolishing the slave trade. It was individual states that outlawed slavery. Since state-rights was an accepted political doctrine until the Civil War, for the most part this going-against the pro-slavery Constitution had been tolerated by the slavers who controlled southern state governments.

Dred Scott hoped that the result of his case would be like the Somerset decision had been in England. It would make clear that stepping onto free soil made you a free man. But the Supreme Court, dominated by Democratic Party appointees, declared that Dred Scott remained the private property of his owners. They went further, implying that no state had the right to deny a citizen the right to put his private property, including slaves, anywhere he saw fit. The Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1857. Republican Party candidates for local office and the House of Representatives dominated the elections in northern states in 1858.

Presidential Elections of 1856 and 1860

In 1856 the Republican Party overtook the Whig Party to become the great rival of the Democratic Party. But it was not simply a reformed and renamed Whig Party. The Whigs had been a national party; the Republicans were almost all in the non-slave states. The Whig Party had been political largely in the sense that it was a grouping of people who sought government offices; the Republican Party was a party of principles, a party that took positions on a variety of issues and promised to change the laws of the land in fundamental ways.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan for president in 1856. The Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who used the "free soil, free labor, free speech, free men" slogan for his campaign. The American Party and the Whigs both nominated ex-president Millard Fillmore. Buchanan won well less than half the popular vote, but took a large majority in the Electoral Collage (1,838,169 and 174). Fremont received the second largest number of citizen votes and votes in the Electoral College (1,341, 264 and 114). Fillmore placed third with a substantial number of popular votes but won only Maryland (874,534 and 8).

The congressional elections of 1858 were heavily influenced by popular reaction to the Dred Scott decision. The American Party and Whigs continued their declines. The Democrats, though still a national party, were increasingly identified with slavery. The Republicans continued to strengthen their role in free-state politics.

The presidential election of 1860 is one of the most interesting in American history. The Whig-American-Republican grouping had lost the presidency in 1856 because their vote was divided. Yet the Democrats divided their vote in 1860. The reason was simple: the voters had become passionate about the issue of slavery. In fact, with slavers fighting anti-slavery militias in Kansas, and John Brown having conducted his anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, they were doing more than just voting about the issue. The Republicans were all against slavery, though a large majority of the party were willing to allow it to continue to exist in the southern slave states if its expansion was stopped and slaves became free when they stepped on free state soil (reversing the Dred Scott decision). The Democrats divided into two factions, basically southern and northern factions. Stephen Douglas was the mainstream, northern Democrat; his position was to let each state decide whether to allow slavery or not. That was not good enough for the more radical slave masters, who nominated John Breckinridge on a platform of extending slavery. The remnants of the southern Whig and American parties merged into yet another party, the Constitutional Union Party. Nominating John Bell, they emphasized the need to preserve the union, going to great lengths to take no stand on slavery or its extension.

While the Constitutional Union Party candidate split off some votes that might otherwise have gone to Lincoln, the Democrat vote was much more closely divided. As a result, though he only received 40% of the popular vote (1,866,452), Abraham Lincoln received 180 Electoral College votes, compared to 123 total for the other 3 candidates. All of Lincoln's Electoral College votes came from free states, that is, from northern states plus California and Oregon.

Civil War

Passion often makes for bad judgment, and the slavers proceeded to make a series of mistakes that forced Lincoln and the Republicans to abolish slavery.

When 1861 dawned, with Lincoln soon to be inaugurated, the slavers actually still held the political upper hand. The majority of Supreme Court justices were pro-slavery. Republicans did not have a majority in either house of Congress. To abolish slavery would require a constitutional amendment, which could be blocked by one-quarter of the states; slavers controlled almost one half of the states.

Yet before Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated on March 4, 1861, 7 states announced they had seceded from the U.S. They joined together as the Confederate States of America, under the leadership of a leading member of the Democratic Party, Jefferson Davis.

Aside from the slavery issue, leading southern businessmen and politicians feared the Republicans for another reason. Some Republican politicians, including Lincoln, a former lawyer for the railroads, were backed by northern businessmen, in particular the owners of railroad and manufacturing corporations. Cotton growers feared higher protective tariffs on imported manufactured goods; the south was already deeply indebted to northern bankers and merchants.

Another mistake of the southerners was not taking the matter to the Supreme Court. It is very possible that the Supreme Court, with 5 southern members on it, would have ruled that states have a right to secede. But to admit that the Supreme Court had any jurisdiction over them was as galling to the southern secessionists as it was to the northern abolitionists who evaded the Fugitive Slave laws and Dred Scott ruling.

Not content to rule over a greatly diminished United States, the Republican Party and others who opposed secession (many northern Democrats were pro-slavery but anti-secession) forced a civil war upon the nation. There were two important effects of the Civil War upon the Republican Party (aside from the lasting effects of winning the war).

First, it became the party of Big Government and high taxes. It favored a centralized national government over state and local governance. The Republican war effort required high taxes to pay for men and their supplies, and that supported the industrialization process that went along with war. It became closely tied to northern manufacturing interests, which included a greatly enlarged class of millionaires created by war profiteering. Second, it took on the virtuous role of favoring the abolition of slavery and the improvement of the lives of economically deprived citizens, both Negro and those of European descent. This role is highlighted by the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided free land to western settlers.

These two roles corresponded to two ‘wings" of the party, the moderate wing and the Radical Republicans.

It was the Radical Republicans who supported the Confiscation Act (freeing the slaves of soldiers fighting the union), the Emancipation Proclamation, which was intended to abolish slavery in the confederate states, and the 13th Amendment, which did abolish slavery in the re-united states. They also pushed for the established the Freedmen's Bureau.

The Negro Wing of the Republican Party

In order to remain President in a war-weary nation, in the 1864 contest the Republicans had combined with pro-union, pro-war Democrats into the Union Party. Lincoln had taken Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his Vice-Presidential running mate. When Lincoln was assassinated the country suddenly had a Democrat for president and a Republican Congress led by the Radical Republicans. They denied the now-defeated southern former-slavers the right to sit in Congress; set up the Committee on Reconstruction to rule the southern states; and fought with President Johnson to the point of attempting to impeach him.

In 1866 and 1868 Negro voters helped elect Republican congresses and a new Republican President, Ulysses S. Grant. Radical Republican control of Congress resulted in all male Americans, regardless of their origins or skin color, receiving the right to vote upon passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. The former slave states also remained under military occupation until new state constitutions, written to the liking of Radical Republicans, were in place.

White southerners, with few exceptions, became even more solidly identified with the Democratic Party. Many could not run for office or vote because of their records as traitors. Freed slaves, with few exceptions, joined the Republican Party, giving it a presence in the south for the first time. Many Negroes were elected to local and state offices. For the ex-slavers the situation was intolerable, and the solution was terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist wing of the southern Democratic Party. In locality after locality, then state after state, former slaves were scared away from voting, and then from even being registered to vote. Until the Great Depression most black Americans would be Republicans; in the South they would constitute most of the Republican Party. However, after 1876 few black Americans were able to vote in the southern states. As a result black politicians could not be elected to office; in the South no Republicans could be elected to office at all; and the influence of blacks within the national party was minimal.

Wall Street Republicans

Starting with the civil war and accelerating into the 20th century the United States economy was rapidly industrialized. Even the agricultural economy was being mechanized, so that fewer people's labor sufficed to grow and harvest bountiful crops of wheat and corn. Displaced farmers migrated to the towns and cities. Even food came to be processed in great factories. Corporations were the main form of organization of the large-scale business that grew during this period. Much of politics of the era consisted of struggles between the wealthy, who owned stock in the corporations, and those who labored for wages, ran smaller businesses, or continued to farm on a small scale. Since the Republican Party both dominated the national government and dominated the northern state governments where manufacturing was concentrated, controlling the party was important to the men of great wealth. By using their wealth to support the campaigns of politicians, who in turn used all their power to help their donors, wealthy Americans came to dominate the Republican Party. Radical Republicans lost elections to business-sponsored candidates, and the business of the Republican Party came to be protecting corporate interests. After this point we may refer to the controlling elite of the Republican Party as Wall Street Republicans.

In 1872 a group of anti-corruption minded Republicans formed the Liberal Republican party and nominated newspaper editor Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate. The Democrats, eager to rebuild their party, decided to nominate Greeley as well. But with Grant still a war hero, the Democrats still the party of treason, and many black Americans still able to vote, it was any easy victory for Grant. Two demands of the Liberal Republicans were adopted by the mainstream Republicans. Except for 500 ex-confederate leaders, former rebels had their voting rights, and their right to run for office, restored. Civil service reform was also attempted.

The Presidential election of 1876 provides a good view of the changing social and political landscape. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes. The Klan had done its job: the Democrats swept the southern states excepting two remaining under military governance, South Carolina and Louisiana, plus Florida, then a sparsely populated state with only 4 electoral votes. The winner was disputed in those three states. After much bargaining Hayes was given the Presidency, but only after he promised to pull the remaining federal troops out of the South and, effectively, to do nothing about the disenfranchisement of black voters by the Democratic Party.

Despite more charges of corruption and economic hard times, the Republicans were able to hold onto majorities in Congress until the mid-term elections of 1882. The Democrat's combination of having a Protestant, white-racist wing in the south and a Catholic, immigrant-based, urban wing in the North, was proving to be too powerful for the Republicans. In 1884 the Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland in another close election. But for wealthy men and their corporations, this was not a problem; they controlled both parties quite effectively. The Supreme Court was filled with former corporate lawyers; it could be relied on to overrule state legislature or even a Congress that went against corporate wishes. With both parties dominated by business, a new movement arose. The Farmers Alliance, the Populist Party, labor unions, anarchism, and socialism all were important components of American politics in the late 1880's.

It is important to note that the average Republican voter of the era was not rich, corrupt, or mean-spirited. Most Republicans were farmers, tradesmen, or factory workers who had fought with the Union during the Civil War. They believed in hard work and honest business dealings; they were assets to their communities. Often they voted Republican because the only other choice was to vote Democrat. When offered an honest politician to vote for, or a Progressive Republican candidate, they usually availed themselves to the opportunity. Corporate domination of the Republican Party was carried out in backrooms and by creating a party machine that would see that corporate-friendly candidates were nominated.

Sugar, Hanna, McKinley and War

Many businessmen had great influence in politics at the end of the 19th century, but most were content with high tariffs (customs taxes on imported manufactured goods) and freedom from regulations. The Sugar Trust, however, took control of United States politics for profit to a new level: it required war, and it got war.

A prelude to the main show was provided by Hawaii, where a treaty had granted U.S. rights to a naval base in Pearl harbor in 1887. In 1893, aided by U.S. troops, American sugar cane growers overthrew the native government and asked for Hawaii to be annexed to the United States. But by the time a bill for that was ready in the U.S. Senate, Grover Cleveland had been elected President. He sent a commission to Hawaii that found most Hawaiians wanted to remain independent. No further action was taken until after a much bigger sugar fight.

Sugar magnate Henry Havemeyer had a few problems even after he became fabulously rich and the controlling person in the Sugar Trust. His factories turned raw cane sugar into the crystal white powder that had been a mainstay of world trade for centuries. Not only was very little sugar cane grown in the U.S. (mostly in Louisiana), but some U.S. farmers wanted to grow and refine sugar beets to compete with cane. What the Sugar Trust needed was cheap, untaxed imports of raw sugar, but very high tariffs on competing imported refined sugar. Congress was willing to go along (Havemeyer had perfected the stock-tip bribe: Senators could get rich quick by simply buying and selling sugar trust stock on Havemeyer's instructions) on the high tariffs for imported refined sugar, but Louisiana Senators vigorously opposed low tariffs on raw sugar.

Various interests in the U.S. had long coveted Cuba and other islands in Spain's American empire. Havemeyer determined to buy himself a President and a war. While it is well known that Mark Hanna raised vast sums of money to insure William McKinley triumphed over Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 Presidential election, the role of the Sugar Trust in that election has been overlooked. McKinley owed Havemeyer a war; many American expansionists like Theodore Roosevelt wanted a war anyway. Delay was necessary only because Havemeyer needed to have Citibank buy up sugar plantations in Cuba and Puerto Rico that would become vastly more valuable after the war. Forget the explosion of the Maine: America was going to war regardless. McKinley made demands of the Spanish, had them met fully, and then made even more aggressive demands that no nation would find acceptable.

On April 11, 1898 McKinley asked Congress to declare war, and Democrats and Republicans alike were happy to do it. Spain had already lost the Philippines, excepting Manila, to native rebels, and was barely holding its own against Cuban rebels. On August 12, 1998, the Spanish signed an armistice. 500 Americans had died in battle, while 5000 had died of tropical diseases.

In the Philippines the defeat of the Spanish started an even greater war: one against the Filipino people themselves. They fought guerrilla style; probably 1,000,000 died, many of them civilians; and 4,324 American soldiers were killed. In 1901 the Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured. Most sugar plantations had new American owners. In 1942 the Japanese "liberated" the Philippines from the United States; in 1946, after driving out the Japanese, the U.S. finally allowed the Philippines to become an independent nation.

Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives

The heritage of the Radical and Liberal Republicans was partly buried by the rise of the powerful, corporate and increasingly conservative business wing of the party. But the same economic, technical and cultural changes that affected the entire nation affected the ordinary Republican citizens who often had much input into local politics even when corrupt men occupied higher office.

As the 20th century dawned the reform movement became a tidal wave. A number of streams of citizens' demands came together and fed into each other. Even some demands of socialists gained an audience among Republicans who had felt the brunt of the predatory tactics of the gigantic business corporations. Writers, including the muckrakers, novelists writing books like Frank Norris's The Octopus about Republican farmers being crushed by Republican railroad barons, and non-fiction like Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, had a notable influence on the Republican faithful. The financial panic of 1907 also undermined people's belief in the infallibility of the free market.

Anger at the patent drug industry, the alcohol industry, and the food industry was widespread. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, had become President in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated. Though he had been a promoter of the Spanish-American and then the Philippine-American wars, and was from a very wealthy family, Roosevelt had shown concern for the plight of the poor when serving as New York police commissioner. During Roosevelt's presidency the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed in 1906. The conservation on national forests had started under Republican President Harrison in 1891; but Roosevelt pushed hard on this issue. He placed some 125 million acres in federal reserves, about 3 times the total of all of his predecessors.

While the reformers, known as the Progressive Movement, could be found in both political parties (and in third parties), they had more influence, during this period, in the Republican Party. In addition to Roosevelt, well-known Progressive Republicans included governor Robert ("Fighting Bob") La Follette of Wisconsin, California's governor Hiram Johnson, and governor Charles Evans Hughs of New York State. Issues like getting the right of women to vote cut across party lines, with suffragettes in Republican states working within the Republican Party.

In 1911 the National Progressive Republican league was formed to oust President Taft and get a progressive in the White House. Roosevelt decided to head the progressives and won most of the Republican primaries in 1912. But Taft controlled a majority of delegates to the nominating convention and received the nomination.

The Progressives thought Teddy could beat both the Republicans and the Democrats, so they split and formed the Progressive Party. The Democrats nominated the racist, but otherwise posing as progressive, Woodrow Wilson. Of course Wilson won and the Republicans would not regain the Presidency until 1920.

Roaring Back in the 20's

The 1920's were a critical period for the Republican Party. While the party would contain a progressive or liberal wing until the 1970's, during the 1920's the Wall Street wing gained an ascendency which it never lost. Partly this was because of President Wilson's performance in office, which led to a landslide in 1920 for Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding over Democrat nominee James M. Cox. It was the first presidential election in which women could vote, and they voted Republican.

After a postwar recession the American economy continued the process of rapid industrialization. The European industrial powers had worn themselves out, but America had entered the war only after selling them vast amounts of arms and food. Because the U.S. had spent relatively little on the war, its taxes were relatively low, and manufacturers had a global competitive advantage. Harding appointed men who believed businesses needed no regulation to the agencies that were supposed to regulate business. An ardent anti-conservationist, Albert Fall, was appointed Secretary of Interior.

At the same time businessmen were terrified of the Communist revolution that had taken place in Russia (with failed attempts in several other countries). Conservative groups labeled anyone demanding any reform a communist. Of course there were actual communists, belonging to the American Communist Party, which took orders from Moscow, but most progressives wanted reforms through democratic change, not a dictatorship created by a bloody revolution.

While the economy grew, the stock market ran wild. Taxes on the rich were reduced by two-thirds by the sympathetic Republican Congress. Tariff's on imported goods were greatly increased, supporting prices American manufacturers could charge at the expense of farmers and consumers. Scandals were plentiful, notably the Teapot Dome scandal. Meanwhile organized businessmen made black-market profits selling alcohol to the thirsty, a business made possible by the passage of the Prohibition amendment in 1919.

Harding died in office of natural causes and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. Republicans had another fling with Progressive ideas in the 1924 election, when some split again from the main party and nominated Bob La Follette for President. Calvin Coolidge led the main party ticket. The Democrats nominated a conservative Wall Street lawyer, John W. Davis. This time the Republican split did not prevent a Republican landslide. But Cal only served one term. The Republican nominee in 1928 was Herbert Hoover.

It is difficult to imagine now how popular Herbert Hoover was in 1928. He and the Republicans were so popular it looked as if the Democratic Party might cease to exist. He had become famous during World War I for getting food to the starving in Belgium. He had a good record as Secretary of Commerce; a little too good for the crooked politicians and their businessmen friends. The Democrats nominated Al Smith, who was devoted to making alcohol legal again. That and his Catholicism made him unpopular even in the "solid South" where the Klan, the backbone of the Democratic Party, was almost as anti-Catholic as it was anti-Negro.

Hoover received 21,391,381 votes to Smith's 15,016,443. Smith carried only the 5 solidest states of the Solid South. Hoover was sworn in as President on March 4, 1929. No one knew it then, but the stock market had already peaked.

The Great Depression and a Half-century in the Minority

The exodus of farmers, especially tenant farmers and laborers, for factory jobs continued during the 1920s. Agriculture had not prospered with the rest of the economy during the 1920's. Hoover tried to help by signing the Agricultural Marketing Act in June of 1929. It established a Farm Board that hoped to raise prices of agricultural products. But farmer's unsold surpluses were so large that it never achieved its goals.

By October of 1929 the stock market was down noticeably, though the economy itself was still going strong. Savvy investors like Joseph Kennedy were selling their stocks for cash. Confidence in quick paper stock profits began to wain, and then everyone wanted the paper profits they had accumulated in the 1920's converted to cash on the same day, October 29, 1929. Many speculators had borrowed money to play the market; they were forced to sell their stocks to cover the debts in their margin accounts.

The beloved free-market religion of the most ardent business Republican's had failed (the truest believers blamed the failure on government meddling, the very Devil in their world view). Suddenly realizing they were much poorer, stock speculators cut back on spending. Banks, panicking, called in loans. Demand for goods and services fell, businesses laid off workers, and consumption fell even further.

Herbert Hoover was President when it happened, and Herbert Hoover continued as President until the beginning of 1933. Though Hoover tried various measures, often Congress failed to support him (Republicans because they did not believe in government meddling in business, Democrats because they were delighted to see the nation blame Republicans for the problems). Among the measures tried by Hoover were public projects like the Boulder Dam, creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and the Norris-La Guardia Act that essentially legalized organizing labor unions.

The Democrats won the Congressional (and state and local) elections of 1930, then the Presidency in 1932. In a few short years the Republicans had gone from being the majority party to the minority party.

It is important to note that progressive "liberal" Republicans gained many important positions, notably in Congress, during the Depression years. Many of the acts that are now associated with the Democratic Party, such as Social Security, were in fact passed with broad support from both parties.

Not only would the "business" wing of the Republican Party need decades to see their party have an equal footing with the Democrats, but they would have to work together with a liberal/Progressive wing that had far more influence inside the party.

Towards the end of World War II and during Truman's presidency in particular the Republican Party gained mainly through some voters' irritation at the party in power. In 1946, for instance, the Republicans briefly had a majority in Congress. This success was capped with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President in 1952. But the former WWII commander was much more popular than the party he headed. Eisenhower won by a landslide, but the Republicans barely managed majorities in Congress. An important change took place in the South, however. Florida, Texas and Tennessee went for Eisenhower; the Republican Party began to acquire the southern constituency it would turn to for success after the 1960's.

Eisenhower's Republicans were content to undo what they saw as the most excessive New Deal legacies, such as wage and price controls, but left such programs as Social Security intact. They favored less government-held electricity creation and allowed corporations to begin building nuclear power plants. The economy was again expanding of its own accord, pumped up by a rising birth rate (the baby boom), exports (again, Europe lay prostrate), and pent-up demand from WWII and Korean War era rationing. America still liked Ike in 1956, but the Democrats still held their own in Congress.

Richard Nixon was Ike's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1956 and played an important role within the administration. He was fiercely patriotic and anti-communist, but also adamant that black Americans in the South should be treated as full citizens. In 1954 the Supreme Court, mainly appointed during the New Deal years, declared segregated (by race) schools to be illegal, even if the schools were truly "separate but equal." Southern Democrats and the Klan opposed, sometimes with violence, the integration of southern public schools. In one incident Eisenhower, at Nixon's urging, had to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Democratic governor Faubus tried to prevent the enrollment of "Negro" (the term used in that era) children. The Civil Rights bill of 1957, the first since Reconstruction, was passed with support from Republicans and northern Democrats.

In 1960, allegedly using massive fraud in Illinois, the Democrats won back the presidency by a hair. During the 1960's the Republicans struggled to remain relevant. Blacks enrolling to vote in the formerly segregated southern states forgot that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and the Democrats were the party of Lynching. African-Americans would be the most reliable component of the Democratic party for the remaining decades of the 20th century, and they tipped the scales strongly against the Republicans.

Nixon and Revival

After Vice-President Richard Nixon lost his bid for the Presidency in 1960, what then passed as the ultra-conservative wing gained control of the party. They nominated Barry Goldwater for President in 1964; Lyndon Johnson, who had become President after Kennedy was assassinated, crushed Goldwater in the polls. But Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident and involved the U.S. in a new land war in Asia, in Vietnam. He lost the support of anti-war Democrats, then decided not to run in 1968.

The Republicans next moved back to a centrist, Richard M. Nixon, for their Presidential nominee. The Democrats nominated another centrist, Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President. The Democrats under Johnson had extended the New Deal to include what were called Great Society social welfare programs, also known as the War on Poverty. Nixon held to the traditional Republican belief that the only viable way out of poverty was hard work; programs appropriate in a Great Depression were not needed in the booming economy of 1960's America. Enough working class and middle class Americans agreed with him to elect him President. But the country was still Democratic; both houses of Congress had Democratic majorities, so Nixon had to gain some votes from Democratic congressmen to get his ideas enacted.

Richard Nixon had several remarkable achievements in office. In foreign policy Nixon recognized that Communism was not monolithic. By forging an alliance with Communist China he accelerated the breakup of the communist block countries and helped China regain its status as a great civilization. In domestic policy Nixon realized that the world had changed and that certain reforms had to be put into place to deal with those changes. Notably he signed into law the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In politics Nixon was able to see how the Republican Party might become a majority party again. As the more conservative of the two parties, and in particular the party favoring more individual initiative and less taxes, it was natural that it should find a way to break up the Democratic Party's monopoly in the southern states. The 1972 presidential election would demonstrate that strategy could work.

The War in Vietnam was the biggest issue in the 1972 election. The Democrats nominated George McGovern, who wished to withdraw from Vietnam and was very much in favor of extending New Deal and Great Society programs. The more conservative Democratic Party bosses, though temporarily unable to boss the grassroots around, nevertheless undermined McGovern's campaign. The new black voters for McGovern were counter-weighted by white, conservative, working and middle-class voters, especially in the south, voting Republican for the first time. Nixon won every state but Massachusetts, but the Democrats still held control of Congress.

There may have been an element of racism in the South when white voters began voting for Republican candidates, and later even changed their party registration. After all, blacks were now Democrats. But the main reason white voters switched was because most had little desire, themselves, for social welfare programs. Religion played a role too; the Republican Party was traditionally Protestant, as were white southern voters. These southern voters were also very anti-communist; the Democrats, and McGovern in particular, appeared to be soft on Communism.

But Richard Nixon had made a serious error in judgment on two points. Despite his great achievements, Watergate and the Vietnam War would destroy his reputation. In Vietnam he underestimated how badly the Vietnamese wanted to be free from American domination. No matter how much he threatened, no matter what horrible weapons he unleashed on the people of Vietnam, they continued to fight. Expanding the war into Cambodia backfired, strengthening the Cambodian Communists. Finally Nixon had to negotiate a withdrawal of American troops; after a face-saving period of time, the Communists took control of all of Vietnam. As a result Nixon lost the support of the militarists, who blamed him for losing a war, and of the pacifists, who blamed him for prosecuting it before losing it.

His second great error was unleashing his "dirty tricks" team on the Democrats. In retrospect he would have won the 1972 election easily by simply running an honest campaign. But the dirty-tricks gang was caught burglering the offices of the Democrats in the Watergate Hotel. Nixon tried to cover up his role in the affair, but a committee of Congress kept investigating until Nixon was compelled to resign to avoid impeachment. Since Vice-President Agnew had resigned due to a scandal in 1973, the new Vice-President, Gerald Ford, became the new President of the United States.

The Watergate scandal and disillusionment after the loss of the war in Vietnam temporarily stopped the Republican party's growth. Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon a pardon, but the voters would not pardon Gerald when he ran for President in 1976. The Democrats, worried about their eroding base in the South, nominated a moderate Georgia former governor, Jimmy Carter, and regained the White House.

Reagan and Resurgence

But in the 1976, 1978, and 1980 elections the tendency of the country to realign around the parties on a new basis continued, with the results most visible in the south, where many formerly Democratic voters and elected politicians switched to being Republicans. The conservative wing of the Democratic party was weakened by these defections to the Republicans.

Since the Great Depression the only way the Republicans had been able to get a President elected was by choosing a moderate candidate like Eisenhower or Nixon. That was about to change. The Goldwater Republicans had never given up. As memories of the Depression evaporated, and the results of the 60's drug culture became apparent, their appeal to conservative values and free-market ideology gained ground in the party and with voters. Republicans nominated ultra-conservative former movie actor (and former Governor of California) Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. Jimmy Carter ran for a second term. His defeat is usually attributed to an economic recession, post-Vietnam bad feelings, and the fall of an American puppet, the Shaw of Iran. During the election campaign the revolutionaries in Iran held U.S. consulate members hostage. Carter appeared to be weak and ineffective in dealing with the situation.

From 1932 until 1980 American politics were dominated by the Democratic Party and the idea that the main purpose of government is social welfare and economic expansion through increasing the incomes (and spending) of the working class. Since 1980 (up until this essay is being written in 2005) politics has been dominated by the Republican Party and the idea that the main purposes of government is providing order and economic expansion through increasing the profits of business enterprises. Generally, voters have been happy with economic expansion no matter what the cause (and unhappy with stagnation or decline).

It was called the Reagan Revolution but in fact the Reagan era kept most of the New Deal and Great Society programs, though some were scaled back. It was in foreign policy that Reagan made the most dramatic changes. He escalated the cold war, not by an actual attack, but by increasing military spending to a degree that the Communist block countries could not match. He also found methods, some of them of questionable legality, to undermine socialist and left wing governments, in particular that of Nicaragua. These strategies cumulated (after Reagan left office) in the breaking away of the Eastern European states from Soviet dominance starting with Poland. A regime change in Russia and the breakup of the Soviet union followed.

While domestic policies ended the Reagan era little changed, the positive experience of having an expanding economy and victory over communism greatly strengthened not only the credibility of the Republican Party with American voters, but also the dominance of the conservative wing within the Republican Party.

The Christian Right and Newt Gingrich

In 1988 in the Republican presidential primaries television evangelist Pat Robertson began as a strong contender but withdrew from the race after his claim to have been in combat as a marine in the Korean War was shown to be false. George Bush, Reagan's Vice-President, became the Republican nominee and then President of the United States. He one-term presidency was characterized by a war against Iraq following the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, an oil-rich kingdom on the Persian Gulf.

Despite its Presidential victories in 1980, 1984, and 1988, the Republican Party was still far behind the Democrats in registered voters. To the extent that the two parties were a reflection of economic classes (with a majority of welfare and working class families registered Democrat, a majority of upper-middle and upper class families registered Republican, and the lower-middle to middle-middle class up for grabs), the Republicans were in a corner. Pressing policies like deregulation, lower corporate taxes, and a lower inheritance tax, all highly desired by the dominant Wall Street clique within the party, might have eroded what support they did have among the less wealthy voters.

It was clear to party strategists, which is to say Wall Street Republicans, that they needed to find a way to get votes from people whose economic needs they did not serve. Their success in breaking up the Solid South, the bastion of the Democratic Party until the 1970s, pointed the way. They would take advantage of non-economic, cultural issues to bring into the Party a huge group of voters who were not motivated, or not very motivated, by Republican economic policies.

The target group was fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. Though found everywhere in the nation, these individuals were most prevalent in the former Confederate states. They included some, but not all, Southern Baptists. Politically they had often been apathetic, with low voter turn outs for elections. But that was changing. A set of issues was chosen that would appeal to them, and with the financial backing of Wall Street republicans, a new set of political and religious leaders emerged. Pat Robertson has already been mentioned; other leaders included Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority, and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. The issues that mobilized this movement were demands to make abortions (and even birth control) illegal; to allow or enforce prayer in public schools; and to make the Bible a basis for law.

While this new Religious Right, as it was called, helped elect President Bush in 1988, the alliance was insufficient to give him a victory in 1992. For eight years Democrat Bill Clinton would sit in the White House, but he was under siege from the Republicans, who gained majorities in the House of Representatives starting in 1994. This was the heyday of radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who managed to direct people's anger against Bill Clinton, his first lady, Hillary, and all things "Liberal." Rush's show, spiked with humor at Democrats' expense, was the most popular show on radio. The Republican representatives in Congress were led by Newt Gingrich, who in the 1994 campaigns introduced the Contract with America. This avoided some big, divisive issues like school prayer and gun control. Instead it focused on reforming how Congress operated, tax cuts, tort (lawsuit) reform, and welfare reform (decreasing payments and eligibility).

Moments of Triumph: George W. Bush and the 2000 and 2004 elections

Despite having, or perhaps because of having, Bill Clinton in the White House, the period between 1992 and 2000 saw solid gains for the Republicans in Congress and at the local level. Focusing on cultural issues and promises to cut taxes was paying off.

The Democrats nominated Bill Clinton's Vice-President, Al Gore, for the Presidency in 2000. After a fierce primary struggle George W. Bush, one of the sons of former President George Bush and recently governor of Texas, won the Republican nomination. The Bush family had ties to Wall Street and in particular the petrochemical industry, but so did the Gore family. With little to distinguish the two candidates, and with the Christian Right as campaign foot soldiers, George W. Bush squeaked to a victory. The election was so close that a dispute arose over who had won in the state of Florida, where Jeb Bush, George's brother, was governor. Whoever won in the state would receive its Electoral College votes and win the Presidency. After a lengthy legal dispute the Supreme Court of the United States, voting 5 to 4 on strictly partisan lines, decided in Bush's favor.

With many American's wondering if George W. Bush had fairly won the election, Bush set about his agenda. The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court; it was the first time since 1928 that Republicans controlled all the branches of government. Before President Bush could do much to implement his agenda, however, the Al Quada attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took place on September 1, 2001. The stock market, overheated because the Federal Reserve had kept interest rates too low during the boom (sometimes called the Internet Bubble) of the late 1990's, plummeted, and the rest of the economy quickly followed.

The Republicans had come to be in charge just in time for another disaster that might make them look like Herbert Hoovers and lead to decades of Democratic Party rule. But George W. Bush was no Hoover. He responded vigorously to the Al Quada attack by invading Afghanistan. He secured a future supply of oil for the United States by invading Iraq after falsely claiming Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Rather than increasing social programs to help the country out of the recession, he pushed through tax cuts (that had been planned by Republicans for decades) that favored large businesses, heirs to fortunes, upper-middle class and upper class Americans. While this created a huge federal deficit, it did help revive the economy when combined with the Federal Reserve's lowering of interest rates.

The American voters rewarded George W. Bush and the Republicans by returning them to office in the 2004 elections (Bush's own victory was narrow; he received 62 million votes to Democrat John Kerry's 59 million). This is particularly remarkable given the both the poor performance of the American economy during his first term and the deterioration of employee and small business incomes. Many of the better paying jobs were moved overseas, and the destruction of small, independently owned retailers was particularly fast in this period.

At the time of the writing of this pamphlet, George W. Bush is President of the United States, the Republicans control a majority of the states, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Agree with them or not, that is a major accomplishment for a political party.

At the same time, the Wall Street Republicans appear to be losing control of the party to the religious Republicans. So far the religious Republicans have supported the Wall Street program of reducing taxes on the rich (the capital gains tax, dividend tax, estate tax, and upper-income bracket taxes). But the anger of lower-class Republican voters is fueled as much by economic failure as by cultural values. There is a great potential for backlash against Wall Street, which was given its wish-list. In contrast the promises to make the cultural changes that motivated lower-class citizens to vote with the Republicans have not been met.

The triumph of the religious Republicans within the party might jeopardize the allegiance of the moderate Republicans who are not homosexual bashers or believers in the rapture; who might actually believe that women have a right to contraceptives, abortion, and divorce; or who realize that the same science that makes NASCAR racers run and allows people to watch the races on TV also is absolutely certain that species evolved through mutations and natural selection. Just as American's demanded Prohibition and then revolted against it when they got it, actually banning abortion, contraception, and divorce; forcing every child in America to pray in school from the Evangelical prayer-book; and returning the TV to a 1950's-style sexual innocence, would almost certainly drive voters to elect less puritanical politicians. Which party might come out ahead in that backlash would depend on how the various parties position themselves.

It was the democrats that started the KKK and its still running today. All you have to do is GOOGLE where is the next KKK meeting. And you say republicans are racist. LMFAO

Did someone insert a textbook?

Hey nazarite, are you a card carrying member of the KKK?

No surprise Minnesota Catlady plays the race card. No one is suppose to question anything Obama says or does for fear of the race card. Liberals can always spot racism whenever they have no defense for Obama. Funny that the Catlady mentions the KKK, since it was formed as part of the Democratic Party. True racism is a part of the heritage of their beloved party, even if liberals offer up endless excuses and spin for that reality.

But the fact his Obama is not ashamed of his success, the country owed him for all the injustices that followed the nations founding. Obama writes about them in his book. Affirmative action worked very well for Obama. No Obama is just ashamed of the success of everyone else, since they didn't build that.

The train moving America to “third world nation status” in on the tracks. Obama is in the engineers seat. We can hear the whistle blowing, but American LIBERALS are too ignorant to move off the tracks. So, look to Greece America. There you will see your future!

ROMNEY/RYAN 2012

You are funny. Unfortunately, it's true.

Write this up in "fiction" form & you'll have a best-seller.

nazarite

Demonrats love food vouchers food stamps! Hypocrites!

Biden will show America what Voucher is really about. His record in CONGRESS is dismal.

Joe Biden met his match this morning just getting out of bed.

How long will it take for Joe to get into a rant and scream mode like a crazy lunatic? Then tell us what a great guy Obama Bin Lying is.

NO MORE YEARS! end of an ERROR

Hahahahaha MrK, The First Family's clothes represent "black power, communism and Malcolm X"??? You question the motive behind his daughter wearing a black dress?????? Really too funny, in a sad and pathetic kind of funny.

I've read some crazy things on these threads, but you have crazy down to a T.

Wow. Like wow. I got to admit I love your motif of "just happened". Really kind of wonderfully written. However, whew, I just hope you don't "just happen" to have access to firearms. You seem driven by demons. Take care.

Its pretty obvious that you are a Republican troll .. and that you obviously get paid by the word. The rancid smell permeates this site.

4 more for our President Obama

Kinda like some left wingers here telling conservatives "we don't need you here"?

The more it looks like Obama is going to win, the more racist and conspiracy minded they get. I agree, there is a direct correlation. The glee from the first debate is over.

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-------Do not be fooled.-------
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Tonight,

Paul Ryan will do what he does best...

LIE.

He will be Mr. Moderate VP. Candidate.

He will not deny nor accept women's rights.

He will stand with Romney the Moderate Mitt.

Paul Lyan does not care what his base thinks nor he cares what the Democrats think.

Lyan only cares what the millions of people watching think.

Lyan will take Myth Romney's advice and say what they think those millions want to hear.

Lyan will say he's pro everything while on TV, he has his own party's back on that.

They know that the only people criticizing will be the Democrats and they do not care as long as their lies are taken seriously by Millions.

Mark my words, Lyan will LIE and LIE and LIE and Deny, deny, deny.

When this is over, remember to refer to this post.

Say NOBO in 2012.

R&R 2012

Go Obama, just Go! Leave Jesus out of your post. One should not write of which they do not know! Obama would have been a good king of Sodom!

And yet you bring up Jesus all the time....go figure...

Go Obama.....and don't let the door of Air Force One slap you in the butt on your way down the gang way when they drop you off in Chicago next January 20th, 2013 after Romney's inauguration!

Um you want to live in an America where Obama supporters can be deported to Chicago if Obama loses.....and WE'RE fascists??

Yes lets bring religion into this. Mormon men, especially a bishop in the church like Romney was, believe as they are free to, that if they live a moral life that they will become gods each with their own planet. I don't recall any of that in my christian learning. In a way I hope it is true for him....The idea of Romney going to another planet comforts me somehow.

Is that like Louis Farakhan and his spaceship just for blacks. Tony - Mitt is a good, honest man, Obama is not!

The mere mention of Christianity does to Obama what garlic does to a vampire. There's a much better chance that Obama is the anti-christ than a Christian. Nazarite is correct; obama would be a better king of Sodom, although New York governor andy cuomo has that position sewn up at the moment.

Proud, and you base this on......?

Please don't let one persons idiotic comments (nazarite) speak for the group he is representing. I am a Christian, and will be voting for Romney. This doesn't mean I believe everything, or anything for that matter, nazarite is posting. I read/hear hateful comments all the time from Democrats, but that doesn't make me assume that that's the way all Democrats are.

There are clearly sane people on both sides of this political divide.....if only the sane posted more frequently. ;)

I base it on Obama's support of homosexual / lesbian / transgender marriage, period. He is no Christian, neither is Biden.

Proud, many Christians support rights for homosexual couples. They see this as part of Jesus' teaching to have love and acceptance for all people and to not throw stones at fellow sinners. I see that you disagree. This does not, however, make you the arbiter of Christianity. :)

Unlike Obama, Romney and Ryan are men of high moral principle. Otherwise, based on proven facts he would be suing Reid and others in the Obama administration for their slanderous defamation of character and reckless accusations!

The Obama administration is so morally debased and can't run on their own record! These sick hate mongers attempt to lie, distort and destroy the record of upstanding Americans like Mitt Romney! How sad for the democratic party! How sad for America!

May God Bless America! Obama will not!

Romney/Ryan 2012

To "Go Obama": I do not see myself as the "arbiter" of Christianity. However, the Bible is clear, black and white, not grey or even somewhat fuzzy on homosexuals. Very sincerely, you seem to be intelligent. You know that it is clear but you choose to spin the topic because of your personal beliefs. If a Christian decides to murder, which I hope you will agree is a sin according to the Bible, should we just accept it and say nothing for fear that some spinster will accuse us of being an "aribiter" of Christianity, or because someone will say that we should not throw stones, or pass judgement, etc? Why you choose to exempt homosexuality from the Bible's teachings is clear. In your heart of hearts, you know your position is wrong. If you do not, please consider going to a good Bible based church. And I am not referring to a "church" that has modified beliefs for homosexuals.

CherylLM,

And this is Obama's fault how? How many people were killed on 9/11? Under the President you fail to remeber ever existed?

Why do those on the right hate "reality"? And they all try to create their own reality?

Hey Nazarite,

As far as the war in iraq who's to blame and 5,000 (about) soldiers dead? If you are such a good Christian; u sure show hatred; I do have a question are you on crack or meth? you are sick!!!!!!

Nazarite

Total F*#@ing garbage.

Obama unmasked is not a pretty sight!

Kirchner, sounds like an obvious fabrication. No need to spread lies about Obama, liberalism is bad enough on its own.

If the sentence starting with "leadership" was actually in the book, Obama wouldn't have been elected.

Of course it's a made-up quote. It's not in the book in any way. No intelligent person would believe Obama called America a "garbage dump". Sadly, too many low information voters don't care about facts, when it interferes with their racism. The good news is, most Americans are not like these people. Just pity them and ignore them.

Have you ever heard of a bird Called A Pheonix? I don't know why you are reading a book that is beyond your comprehension level. I suggest that you start with Charlie and the Steam Shovel and work your way up.