Happy Birthday, Republicans!

[Zkribbler]

Be fair, Rufus. On that list there, you have a war criminal, a literal imperialist, and someone who used federal troops to limit the rights of civilians. I wouldn't be so quick to say that they'd be welcome in any political party today.

Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ike?! If you guys don't want 'em, we Dems will take all three!

[RGBVideo]

They were originally called "Radical Republicans" because their ideas were so liberal

uhh

no

[Imran Siddiqui]

uhh

no

Uh, yes.. VJ. They were radical because they wanted totally equal rights for blacks and to punish the South to make it so. They wanted a 1964 Civil Rights Act in the 1860s.

[Dinner]

uhh

no

At the formative years of the Republican Party just before the Civil War they Radical Republicans made up the majority of the Republicans and since Lincoln was a member of this radical party it was one of the reasons southerners rebelled to begin with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republican_(USA)

[Ben Kenobi]

Try this, Mr. Fun:

As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal." We now read it: 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy." Lincoln.

[Ben Kenobi]

Republicans are the complete antithesis of what their party used to stand for. They started as a northern party and held the positions that Northerners have always held, Social Liberalism and High government expenditure on Public Goods. At the time that meant roads, canals, rails and all kinds of infrastructure. That's what constituted being "Pro-business" before Robber-Barron-ism and Cronyism usurped and perverted that word into a mockery of its former meaning. Republicans now oppose the Public investments that would actually be good for business in the long run.

You are thinking of the Whigs. The Whigs were the northern party. The Republicans were the western party. Northern Catholics and Episcopalians were never Republicans, and voted Democrat in the 19th century.

What we would call pietists then and evangelicals now, have always voted Republican. The big shift in the last 20 years have been that the Democrats have abandoned Catholics, and Catholics have started voting Republican in great numbers since Reagan.

If Catholics can complete the split, it will make serious trouble for the party of Jackson.

[The Mad Monk]

Meh.

[Impaler[WrG]]

You are thinking of the Whigs. The Whigs were the northern party. The Republicans were the western party. Northern Catholics and Episcopalians were never Republicans, and voted Democrat in the 19th century.

Lincoln was a Whig before he was a Republican. It might indeed be the case that the very first informal party forming actions were motivated purely by Abolitionist goals but as the Party form its stances on other issues it clearly held Whig positions on practically everything else. Thus its not surprising that the Republican party effectively ate the Whig party as voters and politicians like Lincoln switch to being Republicans.

As for being a Western party, the only 'West' at the time in terms of States with sufficient population to be a politically influential power base was the Midwest which has closely aligned with the North East and together compromise the 'North' of the Civil war. Their was not yet any politically organized 'West' in the modern sense of the vast expanses of predominantly rural areas between the Mississippi and the Sierra Nevada.

Wikipedia's page on the Republican Party for what its worth

The party was created in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act that would have allowed the expansion of slavery into Kansas. Their first official party meeting was held on July 6, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. Besides opposition to the expansion of slavery, the new party put forward a progressive vision of modernizing the United States — emphasizing higher education, banking, railroads, industry and cities, while promising free homesteads to farmers. In this way, their economic philosophy was similar to the Whig Party's. Its initial base was in the Northeast and Midwest.

As you can see the Economic policies of the early Republicans were the polar opposite of their current positions, namely they were once Progressive. The splintering of the Republicans under Teddy Roosevelt was ware this Progressive streak left the GOP, during the Gilded age it migrated to the Democrats and has resided their ever since.

[MrFun]

Uh, yes.. VJ. They were radical because they wanted totally equal rights for blacks and to punish the South to make it so. They wanted a 1964 Civil Rights Act in the 1860s.

This is an oversimplification of what the Republican party stood for during its early years because you had Republicans within the new party taking different positions on the issues concerning race relations and slavery. Contrary to your post, not all Republicans were radical.

Lincoln, for example, believed in the Declaration of Independence's meaning of basic human equality regardless of race but did not necessarily want to extent to blacks political rights (such as voting and holding offices). Although, later during the Civil War, he began to change with that issue by wanting to extend to black men in Union-occupied Louisiana voting rights.

Anyway, the point is that believing in basic human equality and basic human rights does not necessarily make for a radical Republican. It was the radicals who wanted to extend political rights to blacks while the moderate Republicans usually went only so far as believing in basic human equality.

Right to simply own the fruits of your own labor did not necessarily equate with being entitled to equal voting rights or full desegregation of public facilities.

[mrmitchell]

Lady at a White House party: "Mr. President, I bet a friend of mine I could get you to say at least three words."
President Coolidge: "You lose."

Lady at a White House party: "Mr. President, I bet a friend of mine I could get you to say at least three words."
President Coolidge: "F*** you."

[MrFun]

I like mitchell's unclean version of history better.

[chequita guevara]

Mr. Fun is actually right. Teddy Roosevelt was a huge proponent of an American Empire between 1898 and 1910 but lost his taste for it after that. Congress was significantly still majority isolationist and opposed Roosevelt's imperial ambitions when he was president.

No he didn't. His chief argument for entering WWI was so we could take Germany's colonies for ourselves.

[Naked Gents Rut]

His chief argument for entering WWI was so we could take Germany's colonies for ourselves.

That would've made the war in the Pacific in WWII much easier.

[chequita guevara]

His chief argument for entering WWI was so we could take Germany's colonies for ourselves.

That would've made the war in the Pacific in WWII much easier.

Really, or it would have meant that many more defeats at the hands of the IJN until we were ready to fight back.

[Naked Gents Rut]

The loss of Truk alone would have made the projection of Japanese power in the South Pacific much more difficult.