The Grand Old Party: The History of the Republican Party

2016 has been one of the most unusual election years, and nothing represents the unprecedented nature more than the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, which featured more than 15 candidates. As with most years, several candidates with various political experience - from former and current governors to Congressmen and Senators - ran, but the race also featured a number of political novices, one of whom became the party’s nominee.

In a sense, all of that is fitting given the winding nature of the Republican Party’s history. Now dominant in the American South, the party was anathema in the South for more than a century. Likewise, if someone asked a man on the street in the early 1900s to describe the Republican Party, he might point to Teddy Roosevelt’s efforts on behalf of progressive politics and conservation, whereas a few years later, the Party was known as a protector of big business, and later law and order. During the Reagan Era, the words “small government” came to characterize the party, even as its leaders took one hit after another for wanting to limit social spending. Republicans were in office at the start of the Depression and the end of the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, the direction that the Republican Party has taken at any given time has been determined, for the most part, by the party leadership, which has traditionally made its voice most heard at the Republican National Convention, which convenes once every four years to nominate candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. During its more than 150 years of existence, it has nominated saints and scoundrels, and seen some men make it to the White House and others not. Its first successful candidate was assassinated, as was one of his successors a few decades later.