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Republican Party

The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. The party is named after republicanism, a major ideology of the American Revolution. Founded by anti-slavery activists, economic modernizers, ex National Republicans, ex Free Soilers and Whigs in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally and in the majority of northern states for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.

Articles

Advocates for Self-Government - Libertarian Education: T.J. Rodgers - Libertarian, by Bill Winter
Includes picture, biographical profile and quotes
Politically, Rodgers is a registered Republican, and told The American Enterprise (July-August 1997), "I call myself a libertarian Republican." But Rodgers is no GOP shill. He's happy to criticize Republicans when they stray from his free-market ideals. He told CNET News.com (May 18, 2004), "The Republicans are supposed to be a party of free trade and economic freedom. [But President George W.] Bush has been one of the worst free-trade presidents we've had in a long time. He is a big spender who makes Bill Clinton look like a penny pincher."
Again, the Isolationist Smear, by Sheldon Richman, 17 Jul 2014
Comments on the targeting of Rand Paul as "isolationist", by Rick Perry and other Republican hawks, based on Paul's stance about sending ground troops to Iraq while not ruling out air strikes
It doesn't take much to be smeared as an isolationist by leading Republicans. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who appears to be running for president again, and former vice president Dick Cheney — not to mention Sen. John McCain, Gov. Chris Christie, and other members of the GOP establishment — can always be counted on to drag out that insult whenever they sense a threat from anyone not as hawkish as they are. If they thought that 30,000 U.S. troops should be sent somewhere, and someone recommended sending only 10,000, we could count on Perry, Cheney, et al., to condemn the other person as an appeasing isolationist.
Along Pennsylvania Avenue, by Aubrey Herbert, Faith and Freedom, Oct 1954
Reflecting on the approaching election and the lack of "pleasant" choices, discusses United States politics drift toward socialism since 1933 and the steady subversion of the "right wing" of the Republican Party that began in 1940
[I]n 1940 began ... the program to liquidate the conservative opposition ... The opposition was centered in the "right wing" of the Republican Party, the wing which predominated in the Republican congressional ranks. The goal of the Socialists, then, was to capture the Republican Party. The first step was to seize control of the Republican convention, so that in no future presidential election could the American people choose liberty or isolationism. In this plan, the Left was eminently successful ... This was the turning point for the Republican Party.
Related Topics: Socialism, Voting
Along Pennsylvania Avenue, by Murray N. Rothbard, Faith and Freedom, Feb 1955
Suggests that a conservative third party, albeit initially small, could be more influential than conservatives staying in the two main parties, and considers the reasons for the intense McCarthyphobia
President Eisenhower has clearly embarked on a campaign of reshaping the Republican Party in the image of "moderate progressivism." ... While seemingly the practical way, however, staying in present parties offers a far less realistic choice than forming a new one. If Republican conservatives could not control a Republican convention from 1940 through 1952 ... how could they hope to do so with a "progressive" president in the White House? ... a new party would provide the most practical method for recapturing the Republican Party, to say nothing of forming a possible nucleus for a major conservative "second party."
Related Topic: Conservatism
Along Pennsylvania Avenue, by Murray N. Rothbard, Faith and Freedom, Apr 1956
Draws a scoreboard on the issues between the "Tweedledum-Tweedledee parties" in the 1956 elections, most of the rounds going to the Republicans, then wonders why Ike had only worshippers, but ends by leaving the door open for a Democrat win
Creating the issues is the job of the Opposition Party. But what can the Democrats oppose? The Republican Party has grabbed the New Deal banner and embraced it as its very own ... Clucking at Democrat infighting and extremism, the Republicans will be moderate in all things: for integration but slowly, for investigations in communism but with safeguards, for revision of the McCarran-Walter Act, but not too drastically ... Does this make Republican victory certain? No! ... We must watch these possibly offsetting factors ... the conservatives may finally revolt against the party that speaks free enterprise but acts socialism.
Bad Medicine, by Sheldon Richman, 21 Mar 2003
Discusses the differences between Democrat and Republican policies for government schooling and proposals to add prescription-drug coverage to Medicare
The Democrats want government to dispense schooling ... The Republicans will have none of this. Under President Bush, state and local governments ladle out learning also under Washington's supervision, but if that's not satisfactory, he will let parents take their kids to other government schools ... Another example is prescription-drug coverage for the elderly ... The Bush Republicans will have none of this "socialized medicine." Their plan would also offer drug discounts—bigger ones if the elderly go into private managed-care arrangements. They promise to spend less than the Democrats.
Begrudging Another Battle of Ballot-Boxing, by Kenneth R. Gregg, 23 Nov 2006
Explains how those seeking power through politics are led to compromise, even if they are members of a group espousing principles over expediency, and urges others not to ballot-box but instead vote in the marketplace and the social realm
As I initiated my own process of discovery ..., I quickly became Area Coordinator for a group of Young Republican clubs (campus and community) for the Southeastern section of Los Angeles County and worked with YRs and the upper levels of the Republican Party in L.A. County, both elected and appointed. It didn't take long to notice a significant difference in attitude between the two groups: the individual members wanted freedom. They wanted the government off of their backs and out of their pockets. That was what the GOP meant to them. The goals of the leadership was another thing altogether.
Big-Spending Republicans Can Learn from Ireland's Reforms, by Benjamin Powell, 17 Sep 2003
Contrasts U.S. government spending in the 1990's (under Bill Clinton) and early 2000's (under George W. Bush) with the approach taken in Ireland from the late 1980's
Despite some tax cuts, the size of the U.S. government has increased rapidly under President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress ... Under the Republican Congress during Clinton's years in office, spending jumped from $1.46 trillion to approximately $1.74 trillion—an increase of just under $300 billion ... Despite strong rhetoric leading up to the 2000 election, pairing a Republican president with a Republican Congress has done nothing to reverse this trend ... Post-9/11 spending is not the only cause driving the spending increases. Nondefense discretionary spending has increased by 20.8 percent.
Blueprint for Dictatorship, by Justin Raimondo, 30 Apr 2007
Describes how the Defense Authorization Act, the Military Commissions Act and changes to the Insurrection Act could be used to impose martial law in the United States
The Republicans won't give up an inch of conquered Iraqi territory and instead want to extend the battle into Iran, which is already the target of a not-so-covert campaign aiming at "regime change." (The Iran Freedom Support Act ... was supported by the leadership of both parties in Congress.) Rising antiwar sentiment worries William F. Buckley Jr., who opines that "There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican Party will survive this dilemma." Given the authoritarian proclivities of the Bush administration and the neoconized GOP, there are grounds for wondering whether the republic will survive.
The Case For a Libertarian Political Party, by David Nolan, The Individualist, Aug 1971
A few months before founding the Libertarian Party, Nolan presents his rationale for establishing a new political party, after discussing four other libertarian activist strategies and admitting that "political approaches are inherently coercive"
Both the Democrats and Republicans are so concerned with "winning" that they are almost rabidly hostile to the idea of candidates who would "rather be right than President" ... As might be suspected from the foregoing analysis, the two major parties in America today offer little hope as potential vehicles for the promotion of libertarian ideas. The GOP, at the moment is nothing more that a step-n-fetchit organization for Richard M. Nixon — who, even at his most promising, was nothing to rave about, and who is now virtually indistinguishable from his 1968 opponent Hubert Humphrey.
A Collapsing Presidency, by Paul Craig Roberts, 20 Mar 2006
Discusses the state of the George W. Bush administration, believing they are all neocons, who don't believe in debate, diplomacy or the U.S. Constitution
What is going to rescue Bush? Not the Republican Party. A few Republican congressmen, such as Walter Jones, are trying to get a debate going, but Republicans believe that they are stuck to the fate of their man ... There are no real conservatives or traditional Republicans in the Bush administration ... Increasingly, Republicans demonize their critics as "abettors of terrorism." The Republicans' intolerance for debate makes many Americans uneasy about the real purpose of the $385 million detention camp that Halliburton is building in the US for the Bush administration.
Could Katrina vanden Heuvel Please Just Shut Up?, by Kevin Carson, 22 May 2013
Commentary on The Nation's publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel tweet on "government for common good"
The Republican business coalition just wants to strip-mine the U.S. population. They figure if they exploit us for maximum short-term gains and we all die at age forty from dioxin poisoning and black lung disease, all they have to do is make abortion and birth control hard enough to get and they can breed another supply of slave labor in no time ... The Democrats and Republicans agree on probably ninety percent of the structural monopolies and privileges by which the propertied classes extract rents from the producing majority of the population.
The Democrats Are Doomed, by Lew Rockwell, 9 Feb 2007
Comments on the early slate of Democratic Party presidential hopefuls for the 2008 election and the general ideology and outlook of the Democrats
Those of us who loathe Republicans, especially Republican presidents, have some hope against hope that the Democrats will nominate a candidate who can save us from the certain doom of eternal Republican rule ... The Republicans ... don't believe in government and so they are happy to steal everything in sight, wreck the budget, detonate the bombs, etc. ... [A] Democratic president inspires Republicans to be better than they would otherwise be. They suddenly remember, for example, that government is the problem and not the solution, ... and they even cultivate skepticism about foreign intervention.
Election 2006: A War Referendum, by Justin Raimondo, 16 Oct 2006
Discusses the then forthcoming 2006 U.S. congressional elections as a referendum on the Iraq War and commentary from Markos Moulitsas and Nick Gillespie in a Cato Unbound debate titled "Should Libertarians Vote Democrat?"
[Voters are] angry at being lied into war, and they have someone to blame: the Republicans ... The rise of the GOP as the party of authoritarianism and war has created a movement that is inchoately opposed to our foreign policy ... It is not love of the Democrats but fear of the Republicans that swells the ranks of the "netroots." This is not your father's GOP ... Made up of evangelical Christians and neoconservatives, with the latter in the drivers' seat and the former pulling the bandwagon, the post-9/11 Bizarro GOP embraces the American version of Ingsoc: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Evidence of a Stolen Election, by Paul Craig Roberts, 19 Jan 2006
Discusses Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again (2005) and the evidence about electronic voting machines supposedly used to "steal" the 2004 presidential election
[Mark] Crispin Miller's new book, Fooled Again ... document[s] the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election ... Some of Miller's evidence is circumstantial. However, he documents widespread Republican dirty tricks and foul play ... If hard-to-reach Democratic voters, such as the working poor, are less likely to answer telephones, polls can create the illusion that there are more Republican voters than in fact exist. If the electronic voting machines are then rigged to shift 5 or 6 percent of the vote to the Republican candidate, the result is not at odds with the expected result ...
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Voting
Exploiting the Workers, by Anthony Gregory, 14 Apr 2006
Discusses the attitudes of progressives and the "left", who usually favor the rights of workers, but show little or no concern of the exploitation of workers by income taxation
The organized conservatives ... complain about taxes and yet favor the most extravagant and vulgar spending projects ... It was the Republicans who gave America the Income Tax, under Lincoln and then more permanently through Taft. The GOP has always been for the big tariff, too. When push comes to shove, the right has always found ways to make others pay for its wars and police brutality. Despite the pervasive misconceptions, Republicans characteristically jump at the chance to raise taxes and inaugurate new ones, and when they do cut them, the cuts are nearly always an illusion.
Related Topics: Government, The State, Taxation
Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel joins Libertarian Party ranks: Believes Democrats are out of touch with American citizens, 25 Mar 2008
Libertarian Party press release, including comments from Gravel, Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory
In 2006, former Republican Congressman Bob Barr joined the Libertarian Party ... Barr [says] "Just as Senator Gravel believes Democrats have lost touch with the American public, I too concluded Republicans had lost their core principles, and could no longer associate myself with the GOP ..." ... Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory [says] "Senator [Gravel's] switch from the Democratic Party, as well as former Congressman Barr's abandonment of the GOP, shows that the Libertarian Party is truly a big tent organization moving firmly in the direction of Liberty."
The Fraudulent Meaning of Elections, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, Apr 2006
Examines the arguments raised in the debate between Democrats and Republicans in Congress over the certification of the 2005 Ohio Electoral College voters
Republicans went ballistic at the challenge. Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) declared, "This is not the time, ladies and gentlemen, to obstruct the will of the American people." Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio) bewailed that "this is, in all the years I have been in politics, one of the most base, outrageous acts to take place." ... The Republicans' comments sounded as if there is a grave danger in letting people even start to think about how the whole process works — as if Republicans were terrified of any questions or challenges that would decrease people's submissiveness to the government.
Freedom to Farm Washington, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, Jan 1999
Discusses the results of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act after three years and further farm subsidies made in 1998
Nothing better symbolizes the collapse of Republican principles than the multiple farm bailouts that Congress enacted late last year ... The Republicans claimed that by reducing government regulation, they had solved the "farm problem." ... If the Republicans' idea of freedom is more regulation and bigger welfare checks for landowners, it is no wonder that Gingrich & Co. have lost credibility with the people who brought them to power. Perhaps Republicans should forthrightly admit their socialist concept of freedom — that the more handouts government gives, the more freedom farmers will have.
Related Topics: Farming, Land
UpdGeorge W. Bush's Nixonomics, by Gregory Bresiger, Mises Daily, 22 May 2006
Describes the various fiscal, monetary and economic policies during the Nixon presidency and compares them to those under George W. Bush
Nixon was a "moderate" Republican. Here was another compassionate Republican of the Dewey/Eisenhower/Theodore Roosevelt wing of the GOP ... How did a "conservative Republican" administration give the nation wage and price controls? The Nixon administration—like the Bush administration today—was never fiscally conservative ... [T]he psychological and political damage wrought by Nixonomics was probably greater: the GOP made blatantly socialist policies respectable. Republicans, supposedly the party that would never enact wage and price controls, had imposed controls.
Give Me Liberty [PDF], by Rose Wilder Lane, 1936
Originally published as an article titled "Credo" in the Saturday Evening Post; describes her experiences in and history of Soviet Russia and Europe, contrasting them with the history of the United States, emphasizing the individualist themes
The major political parties do not yet represent this political issue ... The Republican Party remains a political mechanism with no political principle. It does not stand for American individualism. Its leaders continue to play the 70-year-old American professional sport of vote-getting, called politics. Americans (of both parties) who stand for American political principles therefore have no means of peaceful political action. A vote for the New Deal approves national socialism, but a vote for the Republican Party does not repudiate national socialism.
Glorious War!, by Joseph Sobran, The Reactionary Utopian, 31 Aug 2006
Discusses how, after the Bush father and son presidencies, the Republican Party and conservatism became associated with militarism and war
Most observers are predicting a rout of the Republicans in this fall's elections ... I hope so. Oh, how I hope so. May the Republicans perish forever. May vultures gobble their entrails. May their name be blotted out. In short, may they lose their shirts in November. Yes, I'm disillusioned with the GOP. It was bad enough when I thought they were unprincipled. Now, however, it's worse, because they do have a principle after all: war. Two Bush administrations have proved that. War on Panama, war on Iraq, war on "terror," war on Afghanistan, war on Iraq again, and war on Iran, comin' up.
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Conservatism, War
The GOP Purge, by Justin Raimondo, 22 Oct 2007
Describes efforts by some Republican partisans to unseat GOP incumbents who oppose the Iraq invasion, such as Walter B. Jones of North Carolina
The ongoing hara-kiri of the GOP proceeds apace, with the latest being a concerted effort by the party's neoconservative wing to oust sitting Republican members of Congress who oppose the war ... War trumps parsimony in the new GOP's hierarchy of political values, and the ongoing Republican purge is carving this principle in stone ... Nationally, Republicans are wavering in their support for the war, and that's why Ron Paul ... is going from dark horse to a somewhat lighter hue ... The effort to oust Jones demonstrates the essentially parasitic – and destructive – character of the neoconservative virus in the GOP.
Related Topic: Iraq War
GOP, R.I.P?, by Sheldon Richman, 11 Feb 2008
Reviews conservatives' criticisms of John McCain and his positions in his 2008 presidential campaign as well as what the criticism may mean for the Republican Party
Self-anointed Voices of Responsibility are ... going as far as promising to vote for ... Clinton ... Would these conservatives really promote a Democratic victory in November in order to initiate a reform of the Republican Party, the allegedly more mature McCain supporters want to know. Well, why not? Shouldn't principle count for something? Are there no conceivable circumstances under which a political party ought to be defeated to be saved? Of course there are ... I agree with the conservatives in this respect: a Republican party that nominates John McCain for president is unfit to exist. The sooner it is demolished, the better.
The GOP, RIP, by Justin Raimondo, 8 Sep 2006
Ponders the status of the Republican Party prior to the 2006 mid-term elections and after nearly six years of the George W. Bush presidency
For a good 75 years, the Republican Party has been the party of conservatism, the anointed vehicle for the hopes and dreams of those who believe in limited government and seek to preserve the legacy of the Founding Fathers. No more ... the Republicans were rhetorically committed to conservative principles right up until the second Bush presidency ... The Republican Party is today hopelessly authoritarian. Maddened by war, its leaders are so corrupted by power and their desperation to hold on to it, that they will resort to any tactic, any subterfuge, no matter how contemptible and/or self-defeating.
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Militarism
He Loved the Rush, by Doug Casey, 25 Nov 2003
Discusses Rush Limbaugh use of opiates, his posture regarding the Drug War and the hypocrisy (including Casey's suggestion of how Limbaugh could deal with the matter)
The discovery of Rush's liking for opiates makes him a hypocrite, as well as an insufferable blowhard. He served a useful purpose (and was often quite funny) when Clinton was in office. But for the last three years, he's been nothing but an unconscionable flack for the Republican Party, reflexively supporting anything they do or say. My guess, therefore, is that Rush won't be arrested for buying and doing illegal narcotics, as if he were a black, or some white trailer-park trash. He's entirely too well wired with the Republicans.
Related Topic: War on Drugs
Hookers and family values - the GOP's strange bedfellows, by Brock N. Meeks, 9 Aug 1996
Comments on the behind-the-scenes activities at the 1996 Republican Party presidential nominating convention
Five-hundred-dollar-an-hour call girls used as political party favors; lines of cocaine snorted in convention-hall bathrooms; fat, well-rolled doobies lit up like Camel cigarettes ... It'll all be happening next week in San Diego. Welcome to the 1996 GOP presidential nominating convention ... When it comes to drugs, the GOP apparently knows how to party as well. One need look no further than the convention keynote speaker, Representative Susan Molinari of New York, to get a whiff of this. The congresswoman was the subject of a recent New York Observer article which detailed her college pot-smoking days.
Related Topic: California
Karl Hess and the Death of Politics, by Jeff Riggenbach, 13 May 2010
Transcript of the 6 May 2010 "Libertarian Tradition" podcast; includes a trove of biographical information
[W]hy was Karl Hess working for the Republican National Committee? ... [H]is mother, Thelma, was a lifelong Republican, and Hess tended, especially in his younger years, to assume that this meant the GOP stood for the values he knew his mother espoused: values like individualism, self-reliance, personal responsibility. In 1970, Hess told James Boyd ... that the Depression-era "Republican party presented itself as the party that was against centralized power, against militarism and foreign meddling, against Communism; it was for local control, individual liberty and the pioneer spirit. That was my ticket."
Keeping Libertarians Inside the Tent: Alienation avoidance, by Randy Barnett, National Review Online, 22 Nov 2002
Responds to New York Times 16 Nov 2002 op-ed by John Miller complaining that Libertarians are "Democratic Party operatives" by offering suggestions that would make the Republican candidates more appealing to libertarian voters
[Many] of my libertarian friends and relatives ... view the Republican party as cavalier about individual liberty, supporting big government when it serves their purposes as much as Democrats do when it serves theirs ... Care more about the free market. Republicans pay the political price for being pro-business. Unfortunately, this often does not mean their policies are pro-free market ... At minimum, Republicans should support letting states decide this question of crime and punishment when it concerns the wholly intrastate commerce in drugs whether for medical or recreational purposes.
Libertarian GOP defection?, by Bruce Bartlett, The Washington Times, 13 Dec 2006
Discusses the history of the libertarian movement from 1969, when the split from Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) occurred, to the mid-2000s, and ponders the impact of many libertarians leaving the Republican Party
[In the 1970s] most libertarians moved into the Republican Party, which then had leaders like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan who spoke their language ... With the passing of the older generation of Republican leaders that were at least sympathetic to the libertarian message, a new generation of Puritans have taken over the party ... The new [leaders] don't trust people ... They want the government to impose itself on peoples' lives and deny them freedom of choice ... Republicans have lost whatever credibility they once had on economics by indulging in an orgy of spending and corruption ...
Related Topics: Conservatism, Libertarianism, War
My Election Prediction, by Steven LaTulippe, 29 Sep 2006
Discusses the possible outcome of the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections, predicting a "crushing defeat" for the Republicans due to the electorate demanding accountability for the wars, the advantages of divided government and the apparent threat of another war
The American people ... will hand the Republicans a crushing defeat this November ... During the 1990s, when Clinton was president and the Republicans ran congress, the growth of government spending was much slower than it has been in the era of Republican dominance (despite their alleged belief in small government ...). Over the past several years, the Republicans have embarked on a feeding frenzy of pork-barrel spending, no-bid contracts, and outright fraud. They've used their power to suppress investigations of malfeasance, undermine the Constitution and give free reign to the necons' irresponsible foreign policy.
Obama's Willful Foreign-Policy Blindness, by Sheldon Richman, 30 May 2013
Analyzes President Obama's 23 May 2013 speech at the National Defense University, later comments on Memorial Day and the reactions from Republicans
Republicans are upset about ... Obama's May 23 foreign-policy address, yet politics aside, it's hard to say why. "We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over," Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News Sunday. But four days later in his Memorial Day remarks, Obama said, "Our nation is still at war." Why did the earlier speech set off Republicans? ... This all looks more like legacy preparation than real change in policy. Witness Syria and Iran. So why are Republicans fussing? Obama said, "We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root." For Republicans, that's un-American.
Related Topics: Militarism, Barack Obama, Terrorism
The Ominous Republican Hold on Congress, by Sheldon Richman, 7 Jan 2015
Comments on what may be expected with respect to war and foreign intervention from the Republican-controlled Senate in 2015, considering also the inconsistent policy stances of Barack Obama
As we face the new year, the biggest concern for peace lovers is Republican control of the U.S. Senate ... members of the GOP will still be in a strong position to push their belligerent global agenda ... those who abhor war will awaken each day knowing that hawkish Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and their ilk are in control ... congressional Republicans can also be expected to block Obama's proposal to normalize relations with Cuba ... Republicans undoubtedly will try to stop Obama from deferring the deportations of some five million people who are in this country without government permission.
Related Topics: Cuba, Iran, Israel, Barack Obama
Original Intent, by Charley Reese, 3 Jun 2006
Considers how disturbed the Founding Fathers would be if they were to visit the United States in the early 21st century, given various substantive and detrimental changes in the government as devised by the Constitution
The Founding Fathers rejected the parliamentary system ... They intended for Congress to act as a check against attempts by the executive branch to usurp power, and they intended for the president ... to act as a check on Congress. The modern two-party system has nullified this safeguard. Both Democrats and Republicans act like slaves to the man in the White House if he shares their party label, thus nullifying the most important of the checks and balances ... built into the Constitution. By acting like lap dogs when their man wins the White House, both Democrats and Republicans have imposed a parliamentary system on us.
UpdThe Power of Persuasion, by Jeff Riggenbach, Mises Daily, 20 May 2011
Historical account of the Persuasion magazine, edited by Joan Kennedy Taylor between Sept 1964 and May 1968
What [Taylor and her husband] were interested in was a collection of issues that included the right to own gold and the abolition of the military draft. "These were different enough," Joan recalled, that people had trouble figuring out whether to "place us in the liberal wing or the conservative wing of the Republicans." ... On the contrary, [Taylor] would likely have retorted (as she did years later) that she and her friends were merely "a group of New Yorkers who had become convinced that it might be possible to support laissez-faire capitalism from within the Republican Party."
President Paul?, by Joseph Sobran, The Reactionary Utopian, 25 Jan 2006
Commentary and anecdotes on hearing that Ron Paul had formed an exploratory committee for his 2008 U.S. Presidential bid
Many years ago Paul told me, with his affably ironic smile, that he felt more pressure from his fellow Republicans than from Democrats, because the Democrats weren't embarrassed when a Republican voted like a real conservative, but the Republicans were. Showing up his own party has been the story of Ron Paul's career. No other Republican has voted against President Bush as consistently as he has ... As a result, the GOP doesn't care much for him and, if he runs, will try to stifle him. The allegedly right-wing Newt Gingrich, when he was riding high, once supported Paul's opponent in the primary race ...
The Price of Bush, by Joseph Sobran, 11 Oct 2005
Examines the George W. Bush presidency a year after his re-election and argues that conservatives should have known better than supporting him earlier on
His nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court has enraged those who feel, with good reason, that recent Republican presidents have betrayed their trust with lousy judicial appointments ... Compounding his woes is the aura of corruption that now surrounds the Republican Party, with the arrogant House majority leader, Tom DeLay, under indictment and Bush's indispensable advisor, Karl Rove, also facing grave legal and ethical questions. Other Republicans are understandably trying to distance themselves from their party's leader, who has abruptly become a liability to his loyalists.
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Conservatism
Q & A with Karen Kwiatkowski, by Karen Kwiatkowski, Brian Lamb, Q&A, 2 Apr 2006
Video and transcript of the C-SPAN program; Lamb interviews Kwiatkowski about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and her participation in the 2005 film Why We Fight
I grew up in a Barry Goldwater household, OK, so what I thought Republicans were was Barry Goldwater. What I thought Republicans were was Ronald Reagan at his very first electoral campaign when he ran on a very Libertarian Goldwater and – Goldwater-type platform. That's what I thought Republicans were ... [In] the mid-'90s ... I realized that ... even though I never had heard the term "neo-conservative," had no idea they'd been around for 40 years ... I'm politically the same as I was when I was 14 years old, which is, I guess, sad in a way, but anyway, the party left me. The Republican Party left me.
Rebuilding the Democratic Party brand: Back to the future with a return to liberalism's Jeffersonian roots [PDF], by Terry Michael, The Washington Examiner, 9 Feb 2005
As the Democratic Party was set to elect a new chairman, former DNC staffer Michael looks back at its history and recommends a "rebranding" by a return to its Jeffersonian roots
Republicans ... universally embrace an ideology by name. Whether you're a libertarian, balanced-budget, Neo-Con, or religious right Republican, you call yourself "conservative!" The "stickiness" (as marketplace brand managers would call it) of the Republican Party label is in the story enthusiastically shared by Republicans of all stripes: government, with its taxes and regulation, is the problem, not the solution. You could reduce the GOP brand to this: "Government bad. America good. The marketplace will provide. In God we trust. Equal opportunity, but not equal outcomes, for all."
Ron Paul's Goldwater Moment, by Justin Raimondo, 11 May 2007
Critiques Washington-centric "conventional wisdom" about Ron Paul's presidential candidacy
Republican office-holders and party officials are chafing at the President's fealty to his neoconservative first principles ... Polls show over a third of Republican voters disapprove of [Bush]'s policy, and nearly a quarter of registered Republicans support a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq ... [Paul] is a true paleo-Republican [who] wants to go all the way back to the conservatism of Robert A. Taft ... [He] remembers what the ... party used to stand for–limited government, the foreign policy of the Founders, and the preservation of our old Republic against the Scylla of domestic tyranny and the Charybdis of conquests abroad.
Ron's Revolution: Could Dr. Paul really surprise us all?, by Dave Kopel, 9 Oct 2007
Recounts observations from the Second Amendment Foundation's Gun Rights Policy Conference and the impact of the Ron Paul presidential campaign
How many other Republican candidates are getting Democrats to re-register as Republicans so they can participate in the Republican primaries? The Republican Revolution of 1994 promised substantial shrinkage of a bloated federal government. The Republicans who were swept into Congress in 1946 had promised the same thing, and they delivered a great deal. The 1994 Republicans delivered much less ... and eventually became part of the problem. But deep down there's still a hunger among much of the Republican base for someone who will shrink the Leviathan, rather than merely attempt to use it for conservative ends.
The Roots of Individualist Feminism in 19th-Century America, by Wendy McElroy
Introduction to Freedom, Feminism, and the State, a collection of 22 essays edited by McElroy
The catalyst to this situation was the 1867 Kansas campaign to secure votes for women in that state. As confirmed Republicans, [Susan B.] Anthony and [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton traveled from town to town within Kansas, publicly giving impassioned speeches and privately appealing to the Republican Party and Republican papers to lend them the promised support. This support never materialized ... Feeling betrayed, Stanton and Anthony repudiated the Republican Party, thus breaking with many of their abolitionist friends. They began to court the traditionally pro-slavery Democrats ...
Rule of Law Damaged by Schiavo Bill, by Sheldon Richman, 23 Mar 2005
Discusses the implications of the hurried legislation, which became known as the Palm Sunday Compromise, to allow the parents of Terri Schiavo to have federal courts another look at her case, after state courts had ruled against them
The events surrounding the life of Terri Schiavo are tragic enough. Now congressional Republicans and President Bush have made things worse. In one weekend they disabled federalism, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. These principles ... tend to protect individual liberty. By tearing them down, the Republican leadership jeopardizes our freedom. How ironic that this comes at the hands of the self-proclaimed party of limited government ... A memo circulated among Senate Republicans called the Schiavo matter "a great political issue," indicating its appeal to the party's religious supporters.
Related Topics: Rule of Law, Reserved Powers
The State Is No Friend of the Worker, by Sheldon Richman, The Goal Is Freedom, 24 Oct 2014
Discusses how the state interferes with setting wage rates and quotes Thomas Hodgskin on how to reward workers properly
The election season is upon us, and we're hearing the usual political promises about raising wages. Democrats pledge to raise the minimum wage and assure equal pay for equal work for men and women. Republicans usually oppose those things, but their explanations are typically lame. ("The burden on small business would be increased too much.") Some Republicans endorse raising the minimum wage because they think opposition will cost them elections. There's a principled stand.
They Deserved to Lose, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 8 Nov 2006
Comments on the results of the 2006 United States congressional elections and finds the Republican Party losses well-deserved
For years, Republicans have used libertarian rhetoric in their political campaigns. "We favor freedom, free enterprise, limited government, and responsibility," Republican candidates have so often proclaimed. "We're opposed to big government," they loved telling their constituents ... People believed them, but it was all a lie from the get-go. The ... rhetoric was employed ... to deceive people into putting Republicans into power so that they could take control over the federal government and its vast IRS-collected resources and then consolidate their power over the lives and resources of the American people.
Treating Us like Children, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Nov 1998
Comments on an amendment to an appropriations bill that would outlaw Internet gambling, overwhelmingly approved by the Republican-controlled Senate, and discusses the "democratic paternalism" evinced by this action
It's getting harder to imagine a Republican keeping a straight face while proclaiming the GOP to be the party of limited government and personal liberty. The latest reason? The Republican-controlled Senate recently voted 90-10 to outlaw gambling over the Internet. The prohibition, tagged onto an appropriations bill, would impose a penalty of three months in prison and a $500 fine for anyone caught using his computer to gamble in the privacy of his own home. The amendment was the brainchild of Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, and a man, no doubt, who prides himself on his belief in freedom and the American way.
War Loses, Again, by Lew Rockwell, 8 Nov 2006
Reflects on the results of the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections, both what voters thought about the Iraq War and lost opportunities by the Republicans in reducing economic interventions
Republican economic interventions such as Sarbanes-Oxley are to some degree worse than a minimum-wage increase. And consider too the Republican Medicare expansions ... It's a pathetic fact that the Republican Party squandered yet another opportunity to make a difference for the good in this country. They forever promise freedom but forever deliver despotism. They might have shrunk government, really cut taxes, balanced the budget, reformed money, freed up trade, or decentralized government. Instead, they threw it all away to defend an indefensible war.
Why I Am Not a 'Conservative', by Vin Suprynowicz, 13 Jun 2006
Examines the words "conservative" and "liberal", pointing out that Democrats are in fact the former while being called the latter, and then looks at Republicans and how far they have strayed from their supposed principles
We pretty much knew where the Grand Old Party stood when they nominated first Barry Goldwater and then Ronald Reagan ... But after the Republicans came surging back ..., vowing to close down the wasteful and counterproductive federal Departments of Energy and Education ...—they did none of it. Never even tried. In 22 years they have repealed no significant infringement of the Second Amendment, closed no significant federal agency or program ... [T]he leftist press ... [decries] Republican "budget cuts" that are really nothing but modest reductions in the rate of bureaucratic growth.
Why the Republicans Are Doomed, by Lew Rockwell, 21 Feb 2007
Discusses Republican behavior at both the presidential and grassroots level, arguing that they take their societal view from Hobbes
What's interesting here is what motivates big-government Republicanism. The party itself has no strong investment in the public sector as it currently stands, apart from the prison bureaucracy and the military ... Republicans, essentially, see the public purse as something not to conserve but to rob and give to those who do vote Republican ... Republicans ... imagine themselves to be the class of rulers, the aristocrats, the philosopher kings, the high clerics, the landowners, and to keep that power, they gladly fuel the basest of human instincts: nationalism, jingoism, and hate.
Will the Democrats Become Part of the Problem?, by Paul Craig Roberts, 10 Nov 2006
Discusses the outcome of the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections and offers recommendations primarily for congressional Democrats
It only took six years for Americans ... to realize that the Republicans were not leading America in any promising directions ... The lust for unbridled power proved to be too strong a temptation for normally cautious Republicans. The Republicans waved the flag and shouted "terrorist sympathizer" at every civil libertarian who attempted to defend the US Constitution ... and a president who behaved—with the approval of Republicans—as if he were above the law ... Republican rule in the 21st century has devastated American civil liberties and American prestige and leadership capability.

Interviews

Chris Hedges on Reporting on War—And Paying For It, by Lew Rockwell, Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers, 7 Mar 2003
Conducted two weeks before the invasion of Iraq; topics include: the economy, the budget deficit and national debt, inflation, Republican vs. Democrat presidents, tax cuts, war spending, World War II and the depression, Sadam Hussein and unemployment
ROCKWELL: ... If we look at the facts and not the rhetoric, Republicans expand the government much more than Democrats do. If you look at the Reagan administration, the Nixon administration, both Bush administrations, they're all big government operations. The smallest government guy in recent times, Jimmy Carter. Even Clinton was a smaller government guy than George Bush ... [T]here's a professor ... Frankel, who's ... written a paper arguing that the two parties have switched positions ideologically, and that the Republican Party ..., despite rhetoric, is today the party of big government ...
Interview with Karl Hess, by Karl Hess, A. Lin Neumann, Reason, May 1982
Topics discussed include the Republican Party, National Review, AEI, Goldwater, Rothbard, anarchism, the Vietnam War, Carter and Reagan, fascism, urban enterprise zones, the environment, and authoritarianism vs. freedom
HESS: ... I went to work for the Republican National Committee—I forget how old I was then, but I was just a teenager ... By the time I got to be an official grown-up, the Republican Party was pretty well divided into a tiny minority of old Taft-type conservatives and libertarians—people like Frank Chodorov and others—and the new big-business, Cold War faction of the party. By the time Eisenhower knocked off Taft, the idea of the Republican Party as pro-individual and pro-enterprise was pretty much over with. But by that time the Cold War was so popular that those seemed almost trivial matters.
Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran, by Karen Kwiatkowski, James Harris, Josh Scheer, 27 Feb 2007
Topics include possible conflict with Iran, the Pentagon situation prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Office of Special Plans, Vietnam, terrorism and neoconservatism; includes audio and transcript
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: ... So many of these conservative, pro-defense ... anti-Communist democrats abandoned the democratic party at the time of Jimmy Carter ... So now they're in the Republican party, and ... this happened, late 1970s ... [T]hese are not the Republicans that we grew up thinking about ... Of course the Republican party now isn't anything like what I thought it was, it's certainly no Goldwater party, it's a party of big spending, it's a party of corruption. What do you want me to say? They love big government, they haven't seen a big government plan they didn't like.
The Peters Principles: An Interview with Tom Peters: The management guru as playground director, provocateur, and passionate defender of open societies., by Tom Peters, Virginia Postrel, Reason, Oct 1997
Topics discussed include: Peters' public persona, Robert McNamara, Hayek, Silicon Valley, corporate planning, his political views, Republicans vs. Democrats, technological change, nostalgia for the 1950s and the future of business
I do not support the old Republican Party, which I grew up with ..., who essentially were completely captives of big corporate America. I am attracted to the fact that the new Republican Party is small businessish in orientation. But if Ralph Reed and his heirs and assigns cease to exist tomorrow, my life would not be the worse for it. The subtle control of the Moral Majority in the school boards of America makes me want to puke. I just find it so ironic that the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich is essentially a captive of a very statist view of moral controls, which is antithetical to the freedoms I believe in.
Voodoo and Violence: Magician Penn Jillette sees through the censors' tricks, by Penn Jillette, Steven Kurtz, Reason
Topics discussed include: Janet Reno's denunciations of TV violence, the confusions about "censorship", Howard Stern, Beavis and Butt-Head and contrasting Republicans vs. Democrats
I covered the Republican convention for Comedy Central, and I said to Torie Clarke [Bush's campaign press secretary] ... "Do you have any idea how many people like me there are? There are more than you think, and all you got to do is say 'I like porno. Faggots and foreigners are OK. I don't care what people say."' I told her if she said that, "you will move a couple million people over to the Republican Party, people who kind of like the stuff you're saying financially, the no-tax-and-spend stuff ... But the kind of [family values] stuff you're saying: Do you really think that this is buying you anything?"
Related Topics: Films, Television Shows

Cartoons and Comic Strips

Was it the war or the scandal?, by Chip Bok, Akron Beacon Journal, 10 Nov 2006

Books

Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War
    by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, 1996
Partial contents: Slavery and States' Rights in the Early Republic - Emergence of the Republican Party - The Confederate States of America - The War to Abolish Slavery? - Dissent and Disaffection-North and South - The Ravages of Total War

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Republican Party (United States)" as of 27 May 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.