What role did slavery play in the formation of the Republican Party? How did a scrappy third party coalition create what became known as the Grand Old Party? And how did the party of Lincoln become the party of Trump?
Taking us on the journey from 1854 Wisconsin to the present day Republican party is political columnist and author George Will and political scientists Keneshia Grant, Kathryn Depalo-Gould and William Adler.
Have a civics question? Click here to ask and we’ll do our best to answer!
Episode Resources and Lesson Plans
Graphic Organizer for this episode
The History of the Political Parties by C-SPAN Classroom
Party Systems by iCivics. Does every country have a two-party system? Compare ourselves to other systems around the world.
How the Republican Party went from Lincoln to Trump: A seven minute history from Vox.
Episode Segments
TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service, and may contain typographical errors.
Civics 101
The Republican Party
CPB: [00:00:00] Civics 101 is brought to you in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:05] I grew up in a George Will household as I'm sure a good many people who are listeners did too.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:14] Way back when we decided to finally do episodes about the parties. What is the Republican Party? What is the Democratic Party? I think that this was your first suggested guest, Nick.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:27] Yeah. George Will is a conservative journalist who played a major role in the Capodice home when I was a kid. I was the only one who didn't get sick when reading in the car so I would read George Will to my dad in the backseat.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:40] Did you know what he's talking about?
Nick Capodice: [00:00:41] I had no idea what he was talking about.
George Will: [00:00:44] Hello?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:44] Hello. Is this Mr. George?
George Will: [00:00:46] Well, this is me.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:47] Hello. This is Hannah McCarthy at New Hampshire Public Radio. How are you doing this afternoon?
George Will: [00:00:52] I thrive.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:53] George Will, conservative political commentator, writer of many columns and many books most recently The Conservative Sensibility.
George Will: [00:01:02] I wrote the book precisely because I felt the Republican Party and hence the conservative movement had become untethered from its serious intellectual pedigree, and the founders thinking. And I like to think that it's a path back to that.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:18] Right. The thing you need to know about George Will is that this lifelong Republican is not a Republican at the current time.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:25] He severed ties after the 2016 election. He is now unaffiliated.
George Will: [00:01:28] You know, leaving the Republican-political party is not leaving a church or like leaving your family. It's not a wrench to your identity. Political parties are useful until they're not. And I decided the Republican Party wasn't useful to me anymore.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:44] George Will is discontented at the moment. Which is kind of perfect because discontentment- the writing of a new political philosophy, the sloughing off of the old and no longer useful-that is where the Republican Party all started. And that is why it has changed over time.
George Will: [00:02:04] People ought to remember that the Republican Party started as a third party. Americans periodically say," Gee, can't we break up the... the duopoly of our two-party system?" Well, we did once. And that is the Whigs were there and then suddenly they weren't there. They were replaced by this insurgent third party, The Republicans, founded in 1854 in Wisconsin.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:25] So how did we get from that party in Wisconsin in 1854 to the party that George Will has just left in 2020?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:32] Well, that is a long messy story so let's get started. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:37] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:38] And this is Civics 101 and today we are talking the Republican Party. And the Republican Party that started in Wisconsin in 1854 looked dramatically different from the party today.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:53] Right, before we dive back into the history of the Republican Party can we just together establish what is the Republican platform right now?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:02] So the last time the party published an official platform was 2016. And keep in mind, few members of the party outside of politicians and pundits actually read platforms. But lawmakers do tend to vote along the lines established there. So the Republican platform reflects social conservatism. It supports restrictions on abortion and immigration but fewer restrictions on gun rights and corporations. It's big on states' rights, as well. And choice, when it comes to health care and school. It's about what the individual wants rather than what the government says is good for you or not. And fiscally, the GOP is all about low taxes and free-market capitalism.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:54] What does that mean? Because I hear that so often with the Republican Party, what is free-market capitalism?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:59] Right. Most basically it means a system where the market regulates itself and government stays out of it.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:05] OK. Socially conservative, generally opposed to government interference with economics and state lawmaking, and that's the brand of the GOP.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:15] Right.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:16] Wait, where- why do we call them the GOP?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:18] Oh, yeah. GOP stands for Grand Old Party, which used to be a moniker used by the Democrats but the Republicans kind of took it over following the civil war and it just stuck.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:33] Ok. And despite them being the Grand Old Party the Republican Party is, in fact, younger than the Democratic Party.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:39] It is indeed. For a few decades in the 19th century, it was the Democrats and the Whigs. And they're holding down the fort trading the presidency back and forth.
Kathryn Depalo-Gould: [00:04:51] Well, the Republican Party, as we know it, formed in 1856. And it was the first time that the Republicans as a party had a national convention.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:01] This is Kathryn Depalo-Gould she's a professor of political science at Florida International University.
Kathryn Depalo-Gould: [00:05:08] And really, what had happened previous to this is the Democratic Party created in 1828, really with the election of Andrew Jackson, had existed alongside the Whigs. And the Whig Party had competed with the Democrats up until about the 1850s.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:25] So mid-1850s the Civil War is on the horizon.
Kathryn Depalo-Gould: [00:05:29] At that point, slavery became such a huge issue and the Whig Party refused to take a stance. And by the 1850s, slavery wasn't something you could just sort of go "meh". So what happened was the Whigs split apart. And those that had supported slavery became Democrats. And those who wanted slavery abolished became the Republicans.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:54] So the Whig Party just vanishes?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:56] It couldn't agree on slavery, an issue powerful enough to tear the country apart. And it tore the Whigs apart as well. So the Republicans staked their platform mostly on being anti-slavery. Some of them are outright abolitionists, want to get rid of slavery entirely. Some just don't want it to expand west as the country expands west. There's a whiff of small government and states rights in there. But fighting slavery is the great unifier for this young party. Their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, loses to James Buchanan. But their next candidate is Abraham Lincoln.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:35] So a completely brand new party manages somehow to elect the guy who's later considered the greatest president of all time.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:43] Well, you can't discount the fact that this party burst onto the scene in what is essentially a perfect political storm. Because you've got the weakening of the Whigs. There's this division in the Democratic Party. And this really strong simple platform of being the anti-slavery party.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:03] Okay. But after the war is done, then what are the Republicans? Once slavery is eradicated what's their new platform?
Kathryn Depalo-Gould: [00:07:14] What is interesting is, the Republican Party really became this sort of civil rights party even during Reconstruction after the Civil War. They pushed different civil rights acts to protect these newly freed slaves from their state governments for violating their rights.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:31] For a while, after the war, the Republican Party remained the party on the side of African-Americans. They pushed for civil rights legislation. And they started the Freedman's Bureau to protect formerly enslaved people in the south. But the country is changing. And so the Republican Party begins to change too.
William Adler: [00:07:51] The beginning of it, I guess, would be the 20th century -the early 20th century- and maybe around 1912 or so.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:00] This is William Adler, associate professor of political science at Northeastern Illinois University.
William Adler: [00:08:08] And this is actually- the 1912 presidential election turns into a three-way contest between Woodrow Wilson for the Democrats. William Howard Taft, who's the president at the time, the incumbent president of the Republican Party. And then Teddy Roosevelt, who had already been president under the Republican banner, comes back in 1912- decides he wants to try to get the nomination of the Republican Party again away from Taft. With very complicated and messy drama between the two former friends. Taft ends up getting the nomination and Roosevelt and his supporters leave the Republican Party and form a new third party that they call the Progressive Party, sometimes called the Bull Moose Party because of the insignia of the party organization.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:52] Right. This is the election where Teddy Roosevelt spoils the Republican vote by running as a strong third party candidate.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:00] You have the more progressive Republicans behind Teddy Roosevelt. And the more conservative Republicans behind Taft. And the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, wins. Now, the Progressive Party does not stick around. But that divide between liberal Republicans and conservative Republicans does.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:21] Wait, so is this that moment that shifts the Republican Party towards conservatism?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:27] Well, it's certainly part of it. But the shift takes a really long time. For decades, the Republican Party dances and vacillates on social and economic issues.
William Adler: [00:09:39] It's not clean because you still do have conservative Democrats representing the South, progressive Republicans representing New England in the Northeast. But it's sort of the first move towards that process. The presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt is also a step in that process.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:56] Remember, the Republican Party is the party of the North, ostensibly the party of African-American rights. But as the nation is becoming more urban and more industrialized it's also the party of northern businessmen. And both parties are reassessing who it is they want to court as voters. And a few other complications arise between the 1912 election and the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933.
Keneshia Grant: [00:10:26] One of the important things that happens is the Great Depression. And in the Great Depression, the parties have to make a decision about how they are going to respond. The Republican Party suggests that it wants to respond by waiting it out. "It'll be okay. We have kind of downticks in our economy all the time."
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:42] This is Keneshia Grant, assistant professor of political science at Howard University. She also happens to be a foremost scholar on the other major shift happening in the United States at the time, the Great Migration.
Keneshia Grant: [00:10:55] Black people are flooding into the cities. The Great Migration brings about six and a half million black people from the south into the north.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:03] The Republican Party is focusing on business interests and towing a different line than the Democrats in terms of the economy.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:10] Right. And all these African-Americans were moving into the north. I imagine their needs don't necessarily line up with the needs of comparatively prospering northern elites. Right?
Keneshia Grant: [00:11:21] The Republican Party and the people who are making decisions in the Republican Party are suggesting that the Great Depression is not actually that bad. You know, "It'll pass. It'll be fine". But they're making those statements because they are not impacted in the same way. Like they- they may... may lose money. But their losses are not going to look anything like the losses of the person who has just moved to Philadelphia, for example.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:47] So is this when the African-American community started to vote more Democrat when we elected FDR?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:54] Well, not the first time he was elected. Actually, the 1932 election was the last one in which a Republican candidate got the majority of African-American and person of color votes. Things began to change after that. But, you know, again it was slow.
Keneshia Grant: [00:12:09] This is not a neat transition. It's a messy transition. So whether Republicans support black political participation and how they do varies from place to place. So I went to school in Syracuse for grad school- in Syracuse, New York. Black people participated as Republicans for a long time because the Republican Party was actually friendly to black interest. So we think about Chicago, we think about New York, we think about Democrats. But there are some pockets of places where the Republican Party does kind of do the civil rights thing. And black people are thoughtful enough to go to the party that best supports their interests at the time. But eventually, the things that are happening and percolating at the state and local level have to be reckoned with at the national level. And I think this is where we end up with a Republican Party that's making decisions about- not necessarily- "We don't want to be the party of civil rights. But we really care about business interests."
Nick Capodice: [00:13:11] So the GOP starts focusing less and less on civil rights. That leaves this huge issue and a voter base wide open.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:20] Right. This is all part of that transition. And then something big happens in the mid 20th century. Here's William Adler again.
William Adler: [00:13:28] And then the big shift happens after the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, really tied into the passage of the civil rights laws, which really marks the Democrats as the party of the liberal side. And gradually, the Republicans, even though they're split on the issue of civil rights, gradually after that point, turn in a more conservative direction. Gradually over the course of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, all those Southern Democrats gradually become Republicans. And so what you have today, then, is a situation where those people's- you know- the next generation down the line, have essentially flipped their partisan loyalties as a result.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:13] Many Republicans, including George, will say that this change really happened with Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964. Goldwater sought to refocus the party.
George Will: [00:14:25] Goldwater said in his book, The Conscience Of A Conservative, that we had strayed from the idea of limited government. That the founders wanted it limited for a reason. That government should be limited in its power to allocate wealth and opportunity so that we don't politicize life promiscuously. So I... I think beginning with Goldwater we began to worry about this articulately. And we began to say that the Republican Party has to rethink its... its connection to the founding.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:59] Goldwater saying the Republican Party should get back to its roots, which is about small government and the free market.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:06] Yeah, he was very much opposed to government interference. He was all about states rights. He was opposed to most social programs. A lot of moderates in the GOP thought that he was too far right. But he had passionate support among voters and really served to establish the Republican Party as the party of the right. Even that, though, took decades of ideological tug of war between conservative and liberal Republicans.
George Will: [00:15:31] That lasted until Ronald Reagan came in and the parties began to sort themselves out. There really are no longer liberal Republicans and they're no longer conservative Democrats. Whether people are happy about this remains to be seen.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:52] Hannah, we've been talking so much about strong but limited government, and free-market capitalism, but we also have social conservatism. Right? We haven't talked about the "Christian" right. How... how did they become such a significant part of the Republican Party's voter base?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:12] Well, Reagan- I mean- Reagan really firmly established what the Republican Party is. He played to both the capitalist leanings and the social conservative leanings of the voter base. George Will calls this the "theory of fusion". Bringing together two separate but overlapping groups of people.
George Will: [00:16:32] Evangelical Christian social conservatives, concerned with abortion and pornography and all the rest. And, on the other side, the libertarian impulses of those who believe in free-market capitalism. And what Ronald Reagan did was successfully bring those two into the Republican tent. And keeping those two in...in equilibrium and in amicable relations has been a sometimes challenging project, but it has been the essence of Republican success since Reagan.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:08] So all these elements- limited government, limited regulations, social conservatism, those are still part of the Republican Party platform. That's how they define themselves. So what is it that made George Will, a lifelong Republican, sever his ties to the GOP?
George Will: [00:17:28] Today the Republican Party is, in my judgment, a cult of personality. When the party gets back to ideas which are interesting and which people like to talk about, then you can have really serious arguments about whether or not the government should allocate wealth and opportunity. Whether or not the government should... is more efficient than the market in allocating services such as health care or pensions. These... when you start arguing about ideas like this, then questions become empirical questions. What does the evidence show us? What does history teach us about government's effectiveness? And you can lower the temperature of politics by bringing in... by increasing the fact content of it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:13] So I'm not going to say that the country is anything like it was in the 1850s. But the Republican Party did arise out of extreme division and a bunch of people defecting from another party. George Will is looking for a return to something, right, a party recommitted to old ideas. The Republican Party called itself that name way back in 1854 because they were going to be the true representation of Jeffersonian politics- of a philosophy that our nation was built upon. They were harkening back. That was their genesis. And it's something that Republicans like George Will revere. But I'm wondering about the future of the Republican Party. I asked Kathryn Depalo-Gould about this. What might the GOP look like going forward?
Kathryn Depalo-Gould: [00:19:06] I mean, what it's going to look like I can never predict. But that is something that parties change. And I think the winning candidate, who has voters who vote in the Electoral College system, and this candidate's ideas go forward, really influences the party's platform. Because especially these days where we have ideologically divided parties, they're very polarized ideologically, which we haven't really seen frankly since...you know...the Federalists with Hamilton and Adams and the Democratic-Republicans with Jefferson and Madison. It's fascinating that it's almost like "What is my team doing?" And, "I'm going to go with my team." And, you know, that kind of partisanship is something, again- we've only seen a few times, I would argue, in U.S. history.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:54] I want to be careful because we're a show that talks about, say, the civil war. And making big, broad, sweeping statements about how,"Hey, things have never been as partisan as they are right this second." But that said, we are divided as a nation unlike I've seen in my lifetime. And I wonder how that division will change both parties. Does Kathryn think that stark divide between the parties will result in them changing yet again?
Kathryn Depalo-Gould: [00:20:24] The Republican Party is going through changes and this is actually a normal course of events. You know, parties are big tents. They have to have a lot of voters. They have to- they have a lot of issues. They're not going to please everybody. But, you know, as society grows and changes you're going to have shifts. And I think the sort of parsing out that happens from election to election is a very normal thing to be happening. And it's fascinating to see what comes out at the end.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:48] Over the course of its lifetime, the one reliable constant in the Republican Party has been change. The party stays alive not because of its commitment to any one social or economic issue but because it can court voters. So what the GOP will be, and I guess, if the GOP will be, is all in the hands of the people who keep it in power.
Republican 1: [00:21:14] The top three things that are important to us is the economy, we're pro-life, and we want a more tolerant party to the LGBT community and other groups.
Republican 2: [00:21:23] You see a person that actually stands for, you know, what they've been thinking in their head but were too afraid to say all the years.
Republican 3: [00:21:30] Being a Latino in the Republican Party is not the easiest thing in the world this election cycle- I mean it's just honest-
Republican 4: [00:21:37] Honestly, I do not recognize the Republican Party of today.
Republican 5: [00:21:41] Immediately I saw a plan to bring back a manufacturing base to America and that's why the economy needs right now.
Republican 6: [00:21:47] A majority of young Republicans now support marriage equality.
Republican 7: [00:21:50] They reject Republicans on social issues and they reject Democrats on economic issues.
Republican 8: [00:21:55] If they're connected to Donald Trump, they are not connected to me.
Republican 9: [00:21:58] Talking about bringing America back and I'm thinking, "these are values"-.
[00:22:01] If you don't like this country, get out, please. That's all he said.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:25] Today's episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with you, Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton. Eric Janik is our executive producer.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:33] Maureen McMurray is neither grand nor old but she sure is a party.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:37] Music in this episode by Cambo, Bio Unit, Audio Hertz, Chris Zabriskie, Chad Crouch, and Pro Leader. Civics 101 is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
