Before I hear the groans, I’m only 18, so I can ask these questions! Never been into politics, but the recent political race has gotten me interested.
From what I’ve heard and studied, Republicans appear to be for the 1% of America. Special interest and the upper-upper class. This appears a bit bogus to me, that’s why I’m here asking the teeming millions.
Perhaps I’m a bit senile. But I have a hard time believing some group of people would be as heartless to minorities just to elevate WASP men. I’ve heard alot of things, that’s why I need to be edumacated.
They are rabid, vile beasts. Stay away from them! :D:D
Although considered now more a white man’s party, it was the Republicans that championed for black’s voting rights in the years of Reconstruction. On the other side, it was Democrats that were terrorizing blacks at polling places in the South.
This is probably meant for Great Debates, but I’ll give my answer.
In my mind, the Republican Party is associated with:
the wish for a smaller federal government (one of the consequences being the battle cry for less taxation)
proponent of favouring business interests
more privatization of government functions
Conservative values (e.g. no gays in the military, no homosexual marriage)
A greater allowance of the state allowing mentions of the christian religion in public places
stronger military and weaker social programs
less focused on human rights issue in foreign policy, and less inclined to participate in international organizations (I mention this because it’s an interest of mine)
I’m a card carrying republican, so I can say that Arnold’s pretty well summed it up. It’s a very simplified version of the platform, but close enough. There is strife in the party right now based on “Conservative Values”. There is a large group of us who disagree with some of these “values”. Some of the issues include:
-Gay marriage
-Gays in the military
-Pro-Life/Pro-Choice
-Many more
You’ll find, that with the exception of groups like the Christian Coalition, most Republicans(at least at the recent conventions I’ve been to) don’t seem to be voting on a candidate based on the Conservative Values plank. Most of us are Republicans for the other reasons and will continue to fight for various changes in the party.
In a nutshell, it pretty much seems to me that Democrats vote for what works in their favor under the guise that it’s good for the majority and we vote for what works in our favor under the guise that we vote for what works in our favor. I’m willing to admit I’m selfish. When I vote, I’m not thinking how it will affect everybody else, I’m thinking about how it will affect me.
Oh, yeah, this thread’s either going to GD or the Pit. Maybe both. We’ll see.
The Republicans, at this point, are a coalition of many different groups, and thus, hold many different opinions. You may find this stupid or silly, but then I’d challenge you to give me a valid, cohesive statement of what the Democrats believe, and they haven’t been able to do that since their inception.
Arnold’s done a great job of summing up the general platform of the Republican Party; I’d like to add just a little to that. Generally, there are two different (and somewhat competing) philosophies in the Republican Party.
1.) Weak Libertarianism, which means a reduction in the role and interference of the Federal Government in people’s lives. The basic idea here is that individual people make better choices with their money and time than Federal bureaucrats do; therefore, handing off all problems to the Federal Government to solve is in fact helping prolong those problems rather than solve them. Ergo, the Federal government should limit itself as best as possible, and leave matters up to more local governments (states and cities) to solve. By that same token, many projects run by the Federal government would be better left in the hands of private companies accountable to their stockholders and to the government (such as privatizing Social Security, local privatization of such duties as parking meters, etc…
2.) Social conservatives, who see many of the problems of the United States as being the result of the breakdown of society in the 1960’s. Many of them would like to return to a national Christianity-based morality through stricter regulation of media (such as television, movies, radio, etc.), and a better instilling of basic morality in the youths of America (through allowing prayer and religion back into school).
Needless to say, there’s a good bit of dichotomy between the two groups- Social conservatives actually favor more intervention by the government in people’s lives, while weak libertarians often see private morality as none of the government’s concern.
Glad to see you have common sense, both in recognizing the inherent bogosity of the comment, as well as asking us.
In fact, the Republicans represent a lot of people- the rich (hey, look, someone has to represent them. It’s not like the fact that you worked your ass off and made a lot of money means you no longer deserve rights); businesses both large and small (and, in fact, people who work for or run small (less than 10 employees) businesses are a huge percentage of our country) and their owners; as well as the employees of those companies (“Hey, wait!” you cry. “If the Repubs want to cut so many of those social programs, how can they be for the little guy?” Well, when those programs are cut, the Repubs want to give that money back to the ‘little guy’ who loses 30% of his paycheck to taxes of one form or another. Repubs figure that the little guy knows what he needs and can spend his money better than some guy down in Washington can.).
As for representing ‘special interests’: just remember, what to you is a group that represents your needs and desires, is someone else’s “special interest which must be removed from corrupting politics.”
I’d suggest, if you can, find a copy of P.J. O’Rourke’s “Parliament of Whores.” It’s a very good indictment of the Federal Government, a good outlay of why Republicans believe what they do, and a very fun book.
Oh lordy…if you had asked that question every decade since Abraham Lincoln was president, you’d get, well, maybe not a completely different and non-overlapping answer for each decade, but certainly a lot of change.
Republicans have ever been proponents of protecting and conserving the environment. At other times they have been thoroughly in favor of privatizing wilderness lands and/or opening them to industrial utilization and exploitation.
Republicans have been the party of big government, and also the party against it.
Republicans have supported both protectionist tariffs and free trade at different times.
Republicans have been political isolationists and world-shakers, and hawks and doves.
Republicans put feminist planks in their platform and pulled them out later.
Is there anything Republicans haven’t been at one time or another? Yeah…Democrats! (The party once known as the “Democratic Republicans” is the one that became today’s Democratic Party).
Like the Democratic Party, the Republican Party in the long run is about itself, of getting its own membership into as many positions of power as possible. They are mainly associated with the political “right”, which is only a little bit better defined than “Republican”. They have long been associated with the interests of the wealthy and business, and far less often with the “little guy”, although the Democratic Party can and has been elitist, has attracted wealthy voters and investors, and has been regarded as the party of international rather than national business interests.
I hate for the Democratic Party to be in a position of thinking it can take my votes for granted, so I tend to look for reasons to vote Republican. The Republicans always manage to make that difficult! If GBush_II had been as tough with the party conservatives on dropping the abortion ban plank, I might have considered him…oh well…
Just weighing in from inside the Beltway, here. I’d just like to say that what a candidate says and what an elected Senator or Representative does are two entirely different things. Horse-trading and compromise are the rule, not the exception, here on the Hill. This holds particularly true for the Senate.
Senators, even Republican ones, make it their business to look out for what some would consider very un-Republican things. They are forever concerned with the consideration of the minority opinion, be it the minority party, or minority voting groups. Much effort is directed to hearing the “other side.” The Senate usually does a pretty good job of putting the brakes on bad, non-inclusive ideas, which spawn from the other side of the building on what seems like a daily basis. That does not mean that they don’t issue more than a few of their own, but it is fewer than one would expect considering the platforms on which most of these people were elected.
That doesn’t mean that Democrats ain’t Democrats and Republicans ain’t Republicans. Dan Moynihan is still a rabid socialist who wants to redistribute wealth. Slade Gorton still wants to destroy the Indians and turn the Northwest into a parking lot. Jesse Helms is still a ra-- um, still not fully committed to the concept of civil rights. But what their campaigns say, and what they actually do when in office are two very different things. Though occasionally forgotten (like during those ridiculous government shut-downs), there is still a tangible air of compromise rising above the swamp gas and hot air.
Republicans. Why that was the name that Thomas Jefferson’s supporters used during the early years of the United States. It sounded better than “Antifederalist.”
By the 1820s, it had changed into Democratic-Republican and by the time Andrew Jackson became president it was just the Democratic party.
Unfortunately for today’s Democratic Party, they didn’t keep the trademark on Republican Party.
If the Democrats hadn’t given back the name Republican, what would the GOP have used when it was formed?
I’m voting Whig this year. Henry Clay for President!
Know Nothing? Please. Natural Law is what they called themselves when they talked of themselves at all which was rarely, hence the nickname. The Natural Law Party was anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, anti-minority, anti-Jew, and anti-thought. They might have made an effective ally to the Nazis if anyone had taken them seriously.
The Know-Nothing Party preferred to call itself the American Party, not Natural Law. There is a Natural Law party today and any member of it will gladly tell you what it stands for.
At it’s peak (1854), it had 43 representatives in Congress.
The party died out after the 1856 election when it ran Millard Fillmore for president.
I could have sworn this was the other way around: Didn’t the Democratic Republicans shorten their name to Republicans, and later the Federalists evolved into the Democrats?
(Makes sense, Federalists and Democrats both support big government, though if any federalists were around today they’d probably be appalled.)
The Federalists disappeared from the political scene after the War of 1812. Federalists in New England tried to gather steam for a secession movement fearing that all the crazy people who lived in the West (like Kentucky’s Henry Clay) were going to ruin the country. The Hartford Convention, as it was called, was not successful and widely derided as was the death knell for the Federalists.
Was it P.J. O’Rourke who once said,“If you are not a Democrat when you are in your twenties, you have no heart. If you are not a Republican when you are in your forties, you have no brain.”?
Sounds like you may be ahead of your age group.
I’ve read Mark Twain said: “If you’re under 30 and a Republican, you have no heart; if you’re over thirty and a Democrat you have no brain.” Which must be a paraphrase to begin with, given what’s been stated about the evolution of the parties. Anyway, it sounds very Mark Twain-y to me.
If you want a common-sense rubber-meets-proverbial-road essment of what Republicans are, read All the Trouble in the World, or Eat the Rich.
Have gov. enforce rule of law, and get out of the way of business. Enforce sensible ecological laws that really work. Raise endangered animals so that the price falls and poachers don’t have any incentive to go all the wild ones.
