Republican Party United States

"You say you are conservative — eminently conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers... You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it, and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry? John Brown? John Brown was no Republican, and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair... But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union, and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, 'Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!' To be sure, what the robber demanded of me, my money, was my own, and I had a clear right to keep it, but it was no more my own than my vote is my own, and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle... The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!"

"It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper."

"We think slavery is morally wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I think, by natural theology, apart from revelation. Every man, black, white or yellow, has a mouth to be fed and two hands with which to feed it, and that bread should be allowed to go to that mouth without controversy... If the Republicans, who think slavery is wrong, get possession of the general government, we may not root out the evil at once, but may at least prevent its extension. If I find a venomous snake lying on the open praire, I seize the first stick and kill him at once. But if that snake is in bed with my children, I must be more cautious. I shall, in striking the snake, also strike the children, or arouse the reptile to bite the children. Slavery is the venomous snake in bed with the children. But if the question is whether to kill it on the prairie or put it in bed with other children, I think we'd kill it!"

"If the Republican Party of this nation shall ever have the national house entrusted to its keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs of national housekeeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up, whatever difficulties may arise in the way of its administration of the government, that party will then have to attend to. It will then be compelled to attend to other questions... It is true that in the organization of the Republican party this question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present... Slavery is the question, the all absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us, and by that I mean, not the Republican Party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere, all of us wish this question settled, wish it out of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping. The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled. And the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority, are able to accomplish the common object... To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong."

"I see the signs of the approaching triumph of the Republicans in the bearing of their political adversaries. A great deal of their war with us nowadays is mere bushwhacking."

"We think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference."

"What in God's name has happened to the Republican Party? I hardly know any of these people!"

"We are Republicans, and we want Trump defeated."

"During the civil war, northern Democrats countered the Republican charge that they favored rebellion by profession to be the 'white man's party'. They protested the government's emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia and its diplomatic recognition of Haiti. They claimed Republicans had nothing but 'nigger on the brain'. They were enraged when the U.S. Army accepted African American recruits; and they made race a paramount factor in their campaigns. In those days before television, parties held coordinated rallies. On the last Sunday before the election, Democratic senators might address crowds in each major city. Local officeholders would hold forth in smaller towns. Each of these rallies featured music. Hundreds of thousands of songbooks were printed so the party faithful might sing the same songs coast to coast. A favorite in 1864 was sung to the tune of 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'. The new national anthem, 'Nigger Doodle Dandy'."

"Songs such as 'Nigger Doodle Dandy' reflect the racist tone of the Democrats' presidential campaign in 1864. How did Republicans counter? In part, they sought white votes by being anti-racist. The Republican campaign, boosted by military victories in the fall of 1864, proved effective. The Democrats' overt appeals to racism failed, and anti-racist Republicans triumphed almost everywhere. One New York Republican wrote 'The change of opinion on this slavery question ... is a great and historic fact. Who could have predicted ... this great and blessed revolution?' People around the world supported the Union because of its ideology."

"This gallant old party, this gallant old ship."

"Now comes the objection which you hear in the mouths of Democrats everywhere. Negro equality! Negro equality! The 'Black Republicans' are in favor of negro equality!"

"The Republican Party, of which I am a member, stands pledged since 1856 to the extermination, so far as the federal government has the power, the twin relics of barbarism, slavery, and polygamy. They have this power in the territories of the United States."

"The grand old party of human rights!"

"[T]he Republican Party has gone to great lengths in recent years to distance itself from the taint of racism. George W. Bush is the first president to place African Americans in such key White House positions such as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser."

"African Americans identified their freedom with the Republican party. Blacks naturally identified with the party of Emancipation and an overwhelming share of African Americans steadfastly supported the GOP. Continuing black support for the Republicans during Reconstruction was not all surprising when one contrasts that vocal support for black rights offered by many Republicans, particularly fervent Radicals like Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner, with the outright opposition to black political equality and support for Jim Crow by most Democrats. The few insincere, patronizing, and transparent attempts by Democratic politicians to solicit black votes failed. African Americans acted to support their political interests by voting Republican."

"Revels was comparatively a new man in the community. He had recently been stationed at Natchez as pastor in charge of the AME Church, and so far as known he had never voted, had never attended a political meeting, and of course, had never made a political speech. But he was a colored man, and presumed to be a Republican, and believed to be a man of ability and considerably above the average in point of intelligence; just the man, it was thought, the Reverend Noah Buchanan would be willing to vote for... That prayer, one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the Senate Chamber, made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments."

"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

"They made a Faustian deal with the racist devil years ago and now those chickens are coming home to roost."

"When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was paying them a compliment. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they're in the minority, as opposed to the Democrats, who can't seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and Bruce Springsteen."

"Only a Republican, perhaps only a Nixon, could have made this break and gotten away with it."

"For modern Republicans, being downright proud of their ignorance has become a badge of honor, a way to demonstrate loyalty to the right-wing cause while also sticking it to those liberal pinheads who think there's some kind of value in knowing what they're talking about before offering an opinion."

"Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance."

"Of all the political organizations in America, none has had so hard a struggle for national existence as that known as the Republican Party of today; nor has any political party in any country or age achieved so much for the advance of human liberty and the elevation upon a common platform of the religious and civil equality of all men before the law."

", an alleged demon from Hell, will be running as a Republican."

"Southern political leaders were threatening to take their states out of the Union if a Republican president was elected on a platform restricting slavery."

"Men who dare to avow themselves here as Republicans should be promptly branded as the bitter and malignant enemies."

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."

"I am the face of the Re-Pube-Licking Party."

"My father likes to talk about the stroller accident that resulted in me becoming a Republican."

"Republicans buy sneakers, too."

"The Republican Party was started in 1854 as the anti-slavery party by abolitionists opposed to keeping blacks in human bondage, and Republicans, under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln, fought to free blacks from slavery. After the Civil War, Republicans amended the U.S. Constitution to grant blacks freedom, Thirteenth Amendment, citizenship, Fourteenth Amendment, and the right to vote, Fifteenth Amendment. Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled south, one that was fair to blacks. In the book The Political Lincoln: An Encyclopedia Professors Paul Finkleman and Martin J. Hershock debunk the absurd myth that President Lincoln was somehow a 'racist' because of his measured approach to ending slavery in the rebelling south first, while waging a war to end all slavery nationwide. If the Democrats had left blacks alone at this moment in history, our nation would not be faced with racial divisiveness today. Instead, Democrats set for themselves the horrendous task of keeping blacks in virtual slavery... The core socialist philosophy of the Democrats is to give a man a fish, so he can eat for a day. Socialism uses welfare, giving a man a fish, to keep blacks in poverty. The core enterprise philosophy of the Republicans is to teach a man how to fish so he can feed himself for a lifetime."

"We would, if the thing were possible, exclude the word Democracy altogether as unnecessary, and apt to mislead. 'We committed a great mistake,' said JOHN C. CALHOUN to us in 1840, 'when we dropped the name Republican and suffered ourselves to be called Democrats; names are things, and by adopting the name Democrat, we are led to substitute Democracy for the Constitutionalism founded by our fathers.' The Jeffersonian party, in JEFFERSON's days, never went by the name of the Democratic party, and to call, in our younger days, a member of that party a Democrat, was regarded as an insult. The party called itself officially Republican, and never assumed generally the name Democratic till the reelection of ANDREW JACKSON in 1832, when an effort was made to assimilate the American Republican party to the Democratic party of Europe."

"The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks."

"The Republican Party was, for a vital century, the major American political party that most frequently aligned with the cause of civil rights... Well into the twentieth century, many leading Republicans took seriously their party’s history and the responsibility that went with it. They worked to earn the votes of African-Americans and all supporters of equal justice under law... True to their word, top Republicans in Congress provided advice, counsel and support that was essential to the development and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While Democrats struggled with their party’s internal contradictions on the issue, deferring far too frequently to the demands of Southern segregationists who held powerful committee chairs in the House and Senate, and who commanded machines that delivered needed electoral votes, Republicans demanded action... When the key votes in the House and the Senate came fifty years ago, Republicans were significantly more supportive of the Civil Rights Act than were Democrats. The measure passed the House on a 290-130 vote, with support from 61 percent of House Democrats. 152 in favor, 96 opposed. But Republican lawmakers gave it 80 percent backing. 138 in support, just thirty-four against. The critical test came in the Senate in June 1964. Republicans aligned with northern Democrats to break the segregationist filibuster. Then, 82 percent of Republican senators backed the final passage of the measure, as opposed to two-thirds of Senate Democrats."

"C ivil rights advocates within the Republican Party either left or were defeated. House minority leader Charles Halleck, the Indianan Republican who worked closely with the Johnson administration to pass muscular civil rights protections was deposed the following January by his own caucus. John Lindsay, who was rejected in his own party's 1969 New York City mayoral primary, winning instead on the Liberal Party line, became a Democrat in 1971. His ally in the 1963 civil rights push 'Mac' Mathias was so unsettled by the GOP's move to the right that he threatened to run for the presidency in 1976 as a progressive independent. Others champions of civil rights, such as Californian senator Thomas Kuchel, the Republican floor manager in the fights to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, New Jersey Senator Clifford Case and New York Senator Jacob Javits, would eventually lose primaries to conservative challengers... For a time in the 1950s and 1960s, enlightened Democrats and Republicans competed to be the party of civil rights, and the Republicans were in the lead through much of the period."

"There have been plenty of Republicans since, notably former Congressman Jack Kemp and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who have sought to broaden the party’s focus and appeal. But as one of the great Republican advocates of civil rights, John Lindsay, noted when he left the GOP in 1971, 'Today the Republican Party has moved so far from what I perceive as necessary policies ... that I can no longer try to work within it'. John Avlon, the longtime speechwriter for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who has since become a prominent advocate for centrist projects such as the 'No Labels' movement, wrote several years ago: 'The Republican Party was right on civil rights for the first 100 years of its existence. It was right when the Democratic Party was wrong. Its future strength and survival will depend on rediscovering that legacy of individual freedom amid America's essential diversity. To win in the 21st century, the Party of Lincoln needs to start looking like the Party of Lincoln again'. This is true."

"Republicans have a right to reflect proudly on the role the GOP played in securing approval of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This anniversary belongs to both parties, to Democrats who recall Johnson's leadership, to Republicans who recall the role played by congressional Republicans. Unfortunately, the Republican Party that has spent much of its energy in recent years promoting restrictive Voter I.D. laws and that is currently entertaining a telling debate about Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran’s outreach to African-American voters in last month’s runoff election fight, often finds itself at odds with the legacies of Lincoln and the Republicans who championed civil rights in the mid-1960s... The Republican Party should take a very hard look at its past, and it should embrace that past."

"There is no room in the party of Lincoln for a Klansman."

"Let's not forget that The Great Emancipator, the president who spent his legal and political career making some of the most persuasive, moral, common sense, and elegant cases against slavery in our nation’s history, was a Republican. Oh, and he freed the slaves, and since that time, we have always been the 'Party of Lincoln'."

"The pandemic, explained the Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, was the definitive ‘end of the neoliberal era inaugurated by Thatcher and Reagan’. We don’t just hear that from Social Democrats these days. Now right-wing populists, journalists and economists also claim that ‘the Reagan/Thatcher era is over’. These two leaders are often used as symbols of the era of economic liberalization in the early 1980s, and I agree that it feels an awful lot like that era has come to an end. Donald Trump’s advisor Stephen Moore declared that the Republicans are no longer Reagan’s party but Trump’s, and that’s exactly how the party comes across in their recent agitation against free trade, immigration and tech companies, not to mention lies about election fraud. (Reagan once called the peaceful transfer of power the ‘magic’ of the free world.)"

"The Republican Party values polluter wealth over public health."

"GOP, your very existence is on the line here. Show some honesty or you’re done."

"And as far as the budget goes, it's time for responsible Republicans who share these goals - and there are a number of folks out there who I think are decent folks, I've got some disagreements with them on some issues, but I think genuinely want to see the economy grow and want what's best for the American people - it's time for those Republicans to step up and they've got to decide what they want to prioritize."

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it."

"The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. In foreign policy, Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the 'high school sex promise': I'll pull out in time, honest!"

"While Republicans argued over economic directions, they stayed united on the greatest issue of the day, slavery. They were the party of emancipation, the first major party in American history that unequivocally advocated the end of slavery. Republicans had family fights about emancipation, but these were fights about speed more than destination, about means, seldom about ends. During the war, the party emancipated slaves, armed them, expanded their rights at the state and national level, and protected them with the force of arms. By the end of the war many Republicans were calling for black suffrage. Race issues most fundamentally divided the parties. In 1862 the Congress voted on slavery-related questions, emancipation in the District of Columbia, outlawing slavery in the territories, ordering soldiers not to return runaway slaves, and a confiscation act freeing slaves of disloyal masters. On these issues, 96 percent of the Democrats voted 'No'; 99 percent of the Republicans voted 'Yes'."

"Listening to the Republicans talk about the economy and economic policy, however, is like entering into an alternative reality."

"On the issue of slavery, Democrats fought for and gave their lives to expand it while Republicans fought and gave their lives to ban it. Some called it the Civil War, others called it the 'War Between the States'. But to African Americans and President Lincoln it was the war between the Democrats and Republicans concerning the states' rights to maintain the institution of slavery."

"In 1854, the anti-slavery members of the Democratic Party joined forces with the abolitionists and formed a new political party. They called themselves the Republican Party. Their primary goal and mission was to end slavery and give blacks the same rights afforded to white citizens."