The Republican Evolution: From Governing Party to Antigovernment Party, 1860-2020

Unlike my other academic studies of cross-national political parties and comparative party politics, The Republican Evolution: From Governing Party to Anti-Government Party, 1860-2020, has a political purpose.  It aims not to trash the party but to help restore the GOP to its former grandeur.  By documenting the party’s original principles and how they changed over time, I hope to remind Republicans of their party’s history of promoting national unity while governing for the public good. Today, the party operates in reverse, opposing national government while sowing sectionalism by pursuing the Democrats’ old “states’ rights” philosophy. 

Codifying Republican principles in 2,722 planks identified in all 41 party platforms since 1856, I describe the Republican Party’s experience over three different historical eras.  The party’s illustrious Nationalism era lasted from 1860 to 1924, during which Republicans emphasized Order over Anarchy.  In their Neoliberalism era from 1928 to 1960, Republicans downplayed government, favoring the Individual over the State. In 1964, the party entered an era of Ethnocentrism, demeaning national government and favoring White Christians over Others.  During this era, Republicans have acted increasingly as a social tribe catering to their dwindling tribal base.

The Grand Old Party once governed the nation effectively and compassionately under presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. The party today moves in a different direction, sparked by presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and led by presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.  It opposes government policies that would reduce income inequalities, lessen social inequalities, advance health care, improve the environment, and combat climate change, ostensibly because such policies might infringe on personal freedom.  Whereas in 1953, Eisenhower told Congress that Social Security was “an essential part of our economic and social life,” Goldwater in 1960 wrote that its six percent tax “compels millions of individual to postpone until later years the enjoyment of wealth they might otherwise enjoy today.”

As a citizen, I admit a bias to Democratic policies.  As a political scientist, I care more about maintaining the vigorous two-party system that has sustained our American version of democracy for over 200 years. Current Republican leaders are quick to abandon responsible party politics for short-term electoral gains.  My book analyzes Republicans acting as a political party, an electoral team, a social tribe, and a personality cult. Republicans today behave less like a principled political party whose electoral team accepts the outcome of democratic voting than like a social tribe or personality cult claiming transcendent superiority to rule.

Parties can change. For a century after the Civil War, the Democratic Party’s southern wing stained their national party with racism.  Then in 1948, Democrats had a political epiphany; they awakened to their sordid silence on civil rights.  The 1948 Democratic National Convention adopted the party’s first civil rights plank, causing southern delegations to walk out of the convention.  The Democrats gained far more in stature than they temporarily lost in electoral support.  Perhaps my historical account of how their party reversed its principles will encourage some Republican activists to engineer a comparable Republican epiphany, to become the party’s new heroes, and to make the Grand Old Party grand again.