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U.S. Presidential Election, 1912

U.S. presidential election, 1912

The U.S. presidential election of 1912 was fought among three major candidates, two of whom had served as President of the United States. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was nominated by the Republican party with the support of the establishment wing of the party, despite the fact that former President Theodore Roosevelt had won all but one of the Republican primaries; at the convention, the Republicans' progressive wing split off as the Bull Moose Party and nominated Roosevelt. Democrat Woodrow Wilson, nominated by his own Party on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention, defeated both in the general election, winning a vast majority in the Electoral College with only 42% of the popular vote, and initiating the only period between 1897 and 1933 when a Democrat would be elected President.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

The Republican Convention was held in Chicago, Illinois 8 June to 22 June. Even though Roosevelt had won all but one of the primaries, Republicans renominated William Howard Taft and James S. Sherman, incidentally making Sherman the first vice president since Richard M. Johnson to be nominated for reelection. On the evening of June 22, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt asked his supporters to leave the floor of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Roosevelt maintained that President Taft had allowed fraudulent seating of delegates in order to capture the presidential nomination from progressive forces within the Party. Taft's poor showing against Roosevelt in the primaries, the latter contended, evidenced popular support for a more progressive Republican agenda. The rift between progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party had been apparent even before Roosevelt left office in 1908. Roosevelt's support of government regulation, his groundbreaking efforts in conservation and consumer protection, and his willingness to work with organized labor alienated pro-business party members. When Roosevelt tapped William Howard Taft as his successor, he had assumed Taft would continue to support this agenda. Taft's record suggested a leader sympathetic to reform, but the former jurist's attention to the letter of the law irritated Roosevelt and disappointed Republican progressives.

Progressive Party nomination

Republican progressives reconvened in Chicago's Orchestra Hall and endorsed the formation of a national progressive party. When formally launched later that summer, the new Progressive Party chose Roosevelt as its presidential nominee. Questioned by reporters, Roosevelt said he felt as strong as a "bull moose." Thenceforth known as the "Bull Moose Party," the Progressives promised to increase federal regulation and protect the welfare of ordinary people.

Democratic Party nomination

The Democratic Convention was held in Baltimore, Maryland from 25 June to 2 July. After a long deadlock, former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan threw his support to Woodrow Wilson in order to defeat Missouri Representative Champ Clark. Wilson received the nomination on the 46th ballot.

General election

Campaign

The 1912 presidential campaign was bitterly contested. Vice President James S. Sherman died in office on October 30, 1912, less than a week before the election, leaving Taft without a running mate. With the Republican Party divided, Wilson captured the presidency handily on November 5. Theodore Roosevelt's strong third-party candidacy resulted in the only instance in the 20th century of a third party candidate receiving more votes than one of the major party candidates: although he failed to become chief executive again, Roosevelt succeeded in his vendetta against Taft, who received just twenty-three percent of the popular vote compared to Roosevelt's twenty-seven percent. Nicholas Butler was selected to receive the electoral votes from Utah and Vermont that would have gone to Sherman. Source: [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun22.html Library of Congress]

Results

Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote):

State by state results

Source: Leip, David. [http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/data.php?year=1912&datatype=national&def=1&f=1 1912 Presidential Election Data by State]. [http://uselectionatlas.org Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections] (July 31, 2005).

Legacy

Despite an impressive showing in 1912, the Bull Moose Party failed to establish itself as a viable third party, especially after Roosevelt's death in 1919. Still active on the state level, Progressives did not field another Presidential candidate until the run of Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. in the election of 1924.

See also


- President of the United States
- History of the United States (1865-1918)

References


- James Chace, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs--The Election That Changed the Country, Simon and Schuster, May, 2004, hardcover, 448 pages, ISBN 0743203941

External links


- [http://geoelections.free.fr/USA/elec_comtes/1912.htm 1912 popular vote by counties]
- [http://www.multied.com/elections/1912State.html 1912 State-by-state Popular vote] Category:U.S. presidential elections Category:1912 elections

William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was an American politician, the 27th President of the United States, and the 10th Chief Justice of the United States. He remains the only person in history to have led both the Executive and Judicial branches of the United States government since the passage of the Constitution, and is also the last President to hold a public office after his term ended. A lifelong Republican, Taft served as Solicitor General of the United States, federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of War before being nominated for president in the 1908 Republican National Convention with the backing of his predecessor and close friend Theodore Roosevelt. During his life, Taft also worked as a professor of law, once at the University of Cincinnati and once at Yale Law School, and wrote for several newspapers. He was also a noted advocate of world peace. Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election. Among other things, his administration is characterized for trust-busting, strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commission, expanding the civil service, and establishing a better postal system. Two constitutional amendments were passed during his term: the 16th Amendment, authorizing a federal income tax, and the 17th Amendment, mandating the direct popular election of senators instead of by the state legislatures (see below). Taft was the first president to occupy the Oval Office when it was opened in October 1909. Taft later broke off contact with Roosevelt in one of the most well-publicized political feuds of the 20th century. In the 1912 election, Taft lost his bid for a second term; Roosevelt ran on his newly formed Progressive Party ("Bull Moose") ticket, splitting the Republican vote and resulting in the election of Woodrow Wilson. Taft later became Chief Justice, notably becoming the only President to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Early life

Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother was Mount Holyoke graduate Louisa Torrey; his father was Alphonso Taft, a prominent Republican, who served as Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. He was brought up in the Unitarian church, and would remain a faithful Unitarian his entire life. At age 18, he met his future wife Helen Herron at a sledding party in Cincinnati; she and Taft courted while he was away at college.

Education

Like his father, the younger Taft attended college at Yale University. There, he was a member of Skull and Bones, the secret society co-founded by his father back in 1832, as well as the Beta chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternal organization. His college friends knew him by the nickname "Old Bill." Initially, given Taft's physical size, Yale's football coach wanted him to join the college squad, but Taft's father refused to give him permission, citing both concern for his son's safety and his personal opinion that football was "not a gentleman's sport". Instead, however, Taft rowed on the Yale crew team and was an accomplished wrestler. In 1878, Taft graduated from Yale ranked second in his class out of 121. After college, he attended Cincinnati Law School, graduating with his LL.B in 1880. While in law school, he worked on the local newspaper and wrote the popular column "Me and my Hot Dog" The Cincinnati Commercial.

Career

After joining the Ohio bar shortly after his law school graduation, he was appointed Assistant Prosecutor of Hamilton County, Ohio, and two years later in 1882 was appointed local Collector of Internal Revenue. Taft married his longtime sweetheart, Helen Herron, in Cincinnati in 1886. In 1887 he resigned that position, and was appointed to be a judge of the Ohio Superior Court. His star rose quickly, and in 1890 President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Solicitor General of the United States. Bolstered by his acute legal knowledge, in 1892 President Harrison appointed him as an associate judge for the newly created United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a post which he held until 1900. He eventually became the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit, and as chief judge, he wrote one of his most famous opinions in Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. United States (1898). It was then that he met Theodore Roosevelt for the first time, who was then a civil service commissioner. Between 1896 and 1900, Taft was also Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. In 1900, President William McKinley (a fellow Ohioan) appointed Taft as the chairman of a commission to organize a civilian government in the Philippines, which had been ceded to the United States by Spain following the Spanish-American War and the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Although Taft had initially been opposed to the annexation of the islands, and told McKinley that his real ambition was to become a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he reluctantly accepted the appointment when McKinley suggested that he would be "the better judge for this experience." From 1901 to 1903, Taft served as the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippines, a position in which he was very popular both among Americans and Filipinos. For example, in 1902 Taft visited Rome to negotiate with Pope Leo XIII for the purchase of church lands in the Philippines, inducing Congress to appropriate $7,239,000 to purchase the lands, which Taft then sold to Filipinos on easy terms. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt (who by then had become President) offered Taft the seat on the Supreme Court to which he had for so long aspired, but he reluctantly declined when native Filipino groups begged him to remain in Manila as Governor-General. In 1902, however, Roosevelt appointed Taft as Secretary of War, and he returned to the United States. As Secretary of War during relative peacetime, Taft was a well-travelled spokesman for Roosevelt's administration. In 1906, Roosevelt sent troops to restore order in Cuba during the revolt led by General Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, and Taft temporarily became the Civil Governor of Cuba, personally negotiating with General Castillo for a peaceful end to the revolt. In 1907, Taft helped supervise the beginning of construction on the Panama Canal.

Presidency

Panama Canal Panama Canal After serving nearly two full terms, the popular Theodore Roosevelt refused to run in the election of 1908. Instead, he promoted Taft as the next Republican candidate. With Roosevelt's help, Taft handily defeated Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. Throughout his presidency, Taft contended with dissent from more progressive members of the Republican Party, many of whom continued to follow the political lead of former President Roosevelt. Taft fought for the prosecution of trusts, further strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, established a postal savings bank and a parcel post system, expanded the civil service and promoted the enactment of two amendments to the Constitution. The 16th Amendment authorized the federal government to tax incomes; the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, mandated the direct election of senators by the people, replacing the previous system whereby they were selected by state legislatures. Taft also signed the The Organic Act of the Department of Labor, which created the United States Department of Labor. In addition, he actively pursued what he termed "Dollar Diplomacy" to further the economic development of less-developed nations through American investment in their infrastructures. One of Taft's main personal goals while president was to promote world peace. Given his judicial sensibilities, he believed that international arbitration was the best means to effectuate the end of war on Earth. As such, he championed several reciprocity and arbitration treaties. In 1910, he convinced congressional Democrats to support a reciprocity treaty with Canada, but the Canadian government refused to accept it. In 1910 and 1911, however, he secured the ratification of arbitration treaties that he had successfully negotiated with the United Kingdom and France, and was thereafter known as one of the foremost advocates of world peace and arbitration. Despite his obvious achievements, progressivists decried Taft's acceptance of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, which levied a tariff with protective schedules, his opposition to the entry of the state of Arizona into the Union because of its progressive constitution, and his growing reliance on the conservative wing of his party for political guidance. He was criticized for having too great an intimacy with conservative Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Speaker of the House Joseph G. Cannon. By 1910, Taft's party was thoroughly divided between progressivists and the Old Right.

Election of 1912

Old Right Progressive Republicans openly challenged Taft in the Congressional elections of 1910 and in the Republican presidential primaries of 1912. When Taft won the Republican nomination, however, the progressivists organized the United States Progressive Party (a.k.a. "Bull Moose Party") to rival him, and nominated Theodore Roosevelt as their candidate in the 1912 general election. Roosevelt's Bull Moose candidacy split the Republican vote and helped elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Taft himself only received electoral votes from Utah and Vermont, and came in third overall in the election.

Medical condition

Evidence from eyewitnesses and from Taft himself strongly suggests he had severe obstructive sleep apnea during his Presidential term of office, a consequence of his 300 to 340 pound (136 to 159 kg) weight. His legendary tendency to fall asleep in almost any circumstance, an open secret and source of embarrassment for his intimates, is now understood to have been the most obvious manifestation of the disease. Within a year of leaving the Presidency Taft lost approximately 70 pounds (32 kg), dropping his weight from 335 pounds to 264 pounds. His somnolence resolved and, less obviously, his systolic blood pressure dropped 40 to 50 mmHg (from 210 mmHg). Undoubtedly, this weight loss saved his life.

Cabinet


Supreme Court Appointments

Taft appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
- Horace Harmon Lurton - 1910
- Charles Evans Hughes - 1910
- Edward Douglass White - Chief Justice - 1910 (Already on the Court as Associate Justice since 1894, and the first Chief Justice to be elevated from Associate, although Chief Justice John Rutledge had previously served as an associate justice. Taft himself would succeed White as Chief Justice.)
- Willis Van Devanter - 1911
- Joseph Rucker Lamar - 1911
- Mahlon Pitney - 1912 Notably, Taft's six appointments to the Court rank third only to those of Washington and FDR, with his appointment of five new justices tied with Jackson and Lincoln. Taft's unusual opportunity to make five appointments in the single Court term of 1910-1911 came largely from the sickly composition of the Court in 1909; the youngest justice Moody was so ill as to leave the bench in the middle of the 1909 term and never return, and the four justices over 70 were in various stages of decline with three dying before the 1910 term. Perhaps as a result, four of Taft's appointments were men of relative youth and vigor at 48, 51, 53 and 54.

States Admitted to the Union


- New Mexico – January 6, 1912
- Arizona – February 14, 1912

Post-Presidency

Upon leaving the White House in 1913, Taft was appointed Kent Professor of Law at Yale Law School. The same year, he was elected President of the American Bar Association. He spent much of his time writing newspaper articles and books, most notably his series on American legal philosophy. He also continued to advocate world peace through international arbitration, urging nations to enter into arbitration treaties with each other and promoting the idea of a League of Nations even before the First World War began. When World War I did break out in Europe in 1914, Taft founded the League to Enforce Peace. He was also a member of the National War Labor Board throughout the war, including during America's involvement beginning in 1917. Although continually advocating peace, he strongly favored conscription once the United States entered the conflict, pleading publicly that the United States not fight a "finicky" war. He feared the war would be long, but was for fighting it out to a finish, given what he viewed as "Germany's brutality."

Chief Justice of the United States

1917 In 1921, President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft as Chief Justice of the United States, fulfilling his lifelong ambition. Virtually no opposition existed to the nomination, and the Senate unanimously confirmed Taft by voice vote. He readily took up the position, and served until 1930. As such, he became the only president to serve as Chief Justice, and thus is also the only former president to swear in subsequent presidents, giving the oath of office to both Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Taft traveled to England in 1922 to study the procedural structure of the English courts and learn how they disposed of a large number of cases expeditiously. During the trip, King George V and Queen Mary received Taft and his wife as state visitors. With what he had learned in England, Taft advocated passage of the 1925 Judges Act, which empowered the Supreme Court to give precedence to cases of national importance, thereby (in Taft's view) allowing the Court to work more efficiently. While Chief Justice, Taft wrote the opinion for the Court in over 200 cases out of the Court's ever-growing caseload. Some of his more notable opinions include:
- Balzac v. Porto Rico (1922)
- Myers v. United States (1926)
- Gong Lum v. Rice (1927)
- Olmstead v. United States (1928)

Death and legacy

Taft retired as chief justice on February 3, 1930, due to ill health, and was succeeded by Charles Evans Hughes, whom he had appointed to the bench while president. Taft died 33 days later on Saturday, March 8. During the last summer of his life, Taft weighed about 244 pounds, one pound more than his average weight in college. Three days later, on March 11, he became the first American president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His wife, Helen, was reported to have said that his service as Secretary of War was what qualified him for burial there while, in fact, anyone who serves as president and thus Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces is entitled to burial at Arlington. He is one of two presidents (the other being John F. Kennedy) and one of four chief justices buried at Arlington (the others being Earl Warren, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist). A third generation of the Taft family entered the national political stage in 1938. The former president's oldest son, Robert A. Taft I, was elected to the United States Senate. A vociferous critic of the New Deal, Robert Taft was a Republican leader in the Senate from 1939-1953. His other son, Charles Phelps Taft II served as mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio from 1955 to 1957. Two more generations of the Taft family later entered politics. The President's grandson, Robert Taft Jr., served a term as a Senator from Ohio from 1971-1977; the President's great-grandson, Robert A. Taft II, is the current Governor of Ohio. William Howard Taft III was U.S. ambassador to Ireland. William Howard Taft IV is a high official in the United States Department of State. When asked about his time on the Supreme Court and as President, Chief Justice Taft famously said "I don't remember that I ever was President."

Trivia


- Taft was severely overweight to the point that he became stuck in the bathtub in the White House several times, prompting the installation of a new bathtub capable of holding all of the men who installed it. At 6 feet, and weighing over 350 pounds (159 kg), Taft was the largest and heaviest President. There is some evidence that his mother started calling him "my pudgy-wudgy boy" before his fifth birthday. This may have led to his disdain for the word "pudgy." In fact, it was said that an aide blacked out "pudgy" from his morning newspaper.
- In Manila, Philippines, an avenue is named after him, Taft Avenue. It is one of the busiest streets in the city and one of 2 major streets that the Light Rail Transit (LRT) passes through.
- The town of Siloam, Michigan was re-named Taft in his honor, as was a nearby school. The Iosco County town was a flagstop on the Rose City branch of the D&M Railroad.
- In the 1920 U.S. Federal Population Census, William H. Taft was listed as a university professor living in New Haven, Connecticut.
- Taft is the last US President to have had facial hair (in this case, a mustache) as of 2005.
- Taft was the first US President to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game.
- Taft is the only person to have served as both President and Supreme Court Justice.

Media

See also


- Taft family
- U.S. presidential election, 1908
- U.S. presidential election, 1912
- History of the United States (1865-1918)
- Dollar Diplomacy

External links


-
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/taft.htm Inaugural Address]
- [http://vvl.lib.msu.edu/showfindingaid.cfm?findaidid=TaftW Audio clips of Taft's speeches]
- [http://www.apneos.com/taft_intro.html Taft's sleep apnea]
- [http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/g27.htm Taft's medical history]
- [http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/wt27.html White House biography]
- [http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/whtaft.htm Obituary]
- [http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?query=william+howard+taft&queryType=%40attr+1%3D1 William Howard Taft cylinder recordings], from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, William Howard ja:ウィリアム・H・タフト

United States/Republican Party

:This article is about the modern United States Republican Party. For the earlier Republican Party, see Democratic-Republican Party (United States). The Republican Party, often called the GOP (for "Grand Old Party"), is a political party and is one of the two major political parties in the United States (the other being the Democratic Party). The party was first established in 1854 by Northerners who were opposed to the spread of slavery. In the modern political era, the GOP is usually considered the more socially conservative and economically neoliberal of the two major parties. The current President of the United States, George W. Bush, is the party leader. Since 2002 the Republican Party has held a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It also controls a majority of governorships, and a majority of state legislatures. The official symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874, is considered the first important use of the symbol [http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Year=2003&Month=November&Date=7]. In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Republican Party in Midwestern states such as Indiana and Ohio was the eagle, as opposed to the Democratic rooster. This symbol still appears on Indiana ballots. The party tends to hold both conservative and libertarian stances on social and economic issues. Major policies that the party has recently supported include the 2003 Iraq War and across-the-board tax cuts. It has sought business deregulation, gun ownership rights, free trade and a partial privatization of Social Security. It favors the death penalty, calls for restricted access to abortion, and opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage. The Republican coalition is quite diverse, and "moderate" and "conservative" factions compete for power to frame platforms and select candidates. The "conservatives" are strongest in the South, where they draw support from religious conservatives. The "moderates" tend to dominate the party in New England, and are well represented in all states. In the 1940s and 1950s under such leaders as Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller they usually dominated the presidential wing of the party. Since Barry Goldwater defeated them in 1964 they have been less powerful, though they were well represented in the cabinets of all Republican presidents.

History and trends

Birth

Both Ripon, Wisconsin, and Jackson, Michigan, claim the honor of setting up the first statewide Republican party organization in 1854. Delegates In Jackson, Michigan on July 6, 1854 declared their new party opposed to the expansion of slavery into new territories, as permitted by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act.They selected a state-wide slate of candidates. The Republican Party is not to be confused with the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson or the National Republican Party of Henry Clay. Besides opposition to slavery, the new party drew on the previous traditions of the members, most of whom had been Whigs, and some of whom had been Democrats or members of third parties especially the Free Soil Party, and American Party. Since its inception, its chief opposition has been the Democratic Party, which was formed in the 1830s. American Party–1865).]] John C. Frémont ran as the first Republican nominee for President in 1856, using the political slogan: "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont." Although Frémont's bid was unsuccessful, the party showed a strong base. It dominated in New England, New York and the northern Midwest, and had a strong presence in the rest of the North. It had almost no support in the South, where it was roundly denounced in 1856-60 as a divisive force that threatened civil war. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 ended the domination of the fragile coalition of pro-slavery southern Democrats and conciliatory northern Democrats which had existed since the days of Andrew Jackson. Instead, a new era of Republican dominance based in the industrial and agricultural north ensued. Republicans still often refer to their party as the "party of Lincoln" in honor of the first Republican President.

Late nineteenth century

With the end of the Civil War came the upheavals of Reconstruction. Republicans at first welcomed president Andrew Johnson; the Radical Republicans thought he was one of them and would take a hard line in punishing the South. Johnson however broke with them and formed a loose alliance with moderate Republicans and some Democrats. The showdown came in the Congressional elections of 1866, in which the Radicals won a sweeping victory and took full control of Reconstruction, passing key laws over the veto. Johnson was impeached by the House, but acquitted by the Senate. In 1868 the Republicans united around Ulysses S. Grant. In 1872 the party split, as Liberal Republicans detested Grant's corruption and thought that Reconstruction had succeeded and should be ended. Many of the founders of the GOP joined the movement, as did many powerful newspaper editors. They nominated Horace Greeley, who gained unofficial Democratic support, but was defeated in a landslide. Reconstruction came to an end when the contested election of 1876 was handed to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes who promised, through the unofficial Compromise of 1877 to withdraw federal troops from control of the last three southern states. The region then became the Solid South, giving overwhelming majorities of its electoral votes and Congressional seats to the Democrats until 1964. The GOP, as it was now nicknamed, split into "Stalwart" and "Half-Breed" factions, but policy differences were slight; in 1884, "Mugwump" reformers split off and helped elect Democrat Grover Cleveland. As the Northern post-bellum economy mushroomed with industry and immigration, and prosperous agriculture, support for hard money (i.e. gold), high tariffs, and high benefits for veterans became Republican policy. From 1960 to 1912 the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion". Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavernkeepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. "Romanism" meant the Catholics, especially the Irish, who staffed the Democratic party in every big city, and whom the Republicans denounced for political corruption. "Rebellion" stood for the Confederates who tried to break the Union in 1861, and the Copperheads in the North who sympathized with them. Demographic trends aided the Democrats, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were Democrats, and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Republicans struggled against the Democrats' efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892). 1892 faction of the Republican Party.]]

Early twentieth century

The election of William McKinley in 1896 is widely seen as a resurgence of Republican dominance and is sometimes cited as a realigning election. He relied heavily on industry for his support and cemented the Republicans as the party of business; his campaign manager, Ohio's Marcus Hanna, developed a detailed plan for getting contributions from the business world, and McKinley outspent his rival William Jennings Bryan by a large margin. This emphasis on business was in part mitigated by Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley's successor after assassination, who engaged in trust-busting. Roosevelt did not seek another term in 1908, instead endorsing Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his successor, but the widening division between progressive and conservative forces in the party resulted in a third-party candidacy for Roosevelt on the Progressive, or "Bull Moose" ticket in the election of 1912. He finished ahead of Taft, but the split in the Republican vote resulted in a decisive victory for Democrat Woodrow Wilson, temporarily interrupting the Republican era. The party controlled the presidency throughout the 1920s, running on a platform of opposition to the League of Nations, high tariffs, and promotion of business interests. Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were resoundingly elected in 1920, 1924, and 1928 respectively, but the Great Depression cost Hoover the presidency with the landslide election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition controlled American politics for most of the next three decades, excepting the two-term presidency of Republican Dwight Eisenhower.

Second half of the twentieth century

Dwight Eisenhower.]] The post-war emergence of the United States as one of two superpowers and rapid social change caused the Republican Party to divide into a conservative faction (dominant in the West and Southeast) and a liberal faction (dominant in New England) – combined with a residual base of inherited progressive Midwestern Republicanism active throughout the century. A Republican like U.S. Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio represented the Midwestern wing of the party that continued to oppose New Deal reforms and continued to champion isolationism. Thomas Dewey represented the Northeastern wing of the party that was closer to liberalism and internationalism. In the end, the isolationists were marginalized by those who supported a strong U.S. role in opposing the Soviet Union throughout the world, as embodied by President Eisenhower. The conservatives made a comeback under the leadership of Barry Goldwater who defeated liberal Nelson Rockefeller as the Republican candidate for the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater was strongly opposed to the New Deal but he rejected isolationism and containment, calling for an aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy. On social issues Goldwater was a libertarian and did not seek support from the social conservatives. One element of the New Deal coalition was the "Solid South", a term describing the Southern states' reliable support for Democratic presidential candidates. Goldwater's electoral success in the South, and Nixon's successful Southern strategy in 1968 and 1972, represented a significant political turnabout, as Southern whites began moving into the party. Later, the Democratic Party's support for liberal social stances such as abortion, criminal law issues such as abolition of the death penalty, and same-sex marriage drove many former Democrats into a Republican party that was embracing the conservative views on these issues. Conversely, liberal Republicans in the northeast began to join the Democratic Party. In The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips, then a Nixon strategist, argued (based on the 1968 election results) that support from Southern whites and growth in the Sun Belt, among other factors, was driving an enduring Republican electoral realignment. Today, the South is still solid, but the reliable support is for Republican presidential candidates, and no Democratic presidential candidate who wasn't from the South has won a presidential election since 1960. realignment, providing conservative influence that continues to the present day.]] Any enduring Republican majority, however, was put on hold when the Watergate Scandal forced Nixon to resign under threat of impeachment. Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon under the 25th Amendment and struggled to forge a political identity separate from his predecessor. The taint of Watergate and the nation's economic difficulties contributed to the election of Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976, a Washington outsider.

Reagan Era, 1980-1992

The trends Phillips described, however, could be seen in the 1980 and 1984 elections of Ronald Reagan - the latter being a landslide in which Reagan won nearly 59% of the popular vote and carried 49 of the 50 states. The Reagan Democrats were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterwards, but who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. They were mostly white ethnics in the Northeast who were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion, and to his strong foreign policy. They did not continue to vote Republican in 1992 or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not used to describe southern whites who became permanent Republicans in presidential elections. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster analyzed white ethnic voters, largely unionized auto workers, in suburban Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for Kennedy in 1960 and 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans and the very poor. Bill Clinton targeted the Reagan Democrats with considerable success in 1992 and 1996.

Capture the House 1994

House Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich-led "Republican Revolution" of 1994 and its Contract With America. It was the first time since 1952 that the Republicans secured control of both houses of U.S. Congress, which, with the exception of the Senate during 2001-2002, has been retained through the present time. This capture and subsequent holding of congress represented a major legislative turnaround, as Democrats controlled both houses of congress for the forty years preceeding 1994, with the exception of the 1981-1987 congresses (in which Republicans controlled the Senate). In 1994, Republican Congressional candidates on a platform of major reforms of government with measures, such as a balanced budget amendment and welfare reform. These measures and others formed the famous Contract with America, which represented the first effort to have a party platform in an off-year election. The Republicans passed some of their proposals, but failed on others such as term limits. Democratic President Bill Clinton opposed many of the social agenda initiatives, though he co-opted the proposals for welfare reform and a balanced federal budget. The result was a major change in the welfare system, which conservatives hailed and liberals bemoaned. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives also failed to muster the two-thirds majority required to pass one of the most popular proposals—a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress. In 1995, a budget battle with Clinton led to the brief shutdown of the federal government, an event which contributed to Clinton's victory in the 1996 election.

Present day

1996 election With the victory of George W. Bush in the closely contested 2000 election, the Republican party gained control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952, only to lose control of the Senate by one vote when Vermont Senator James Jeffords left the Republican party to become an independent in 2001 and chose to vote with the Democratic caucus. In the wake of the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, however, Bush's popularity rose as he pursued a "War on Terrorism" that included the invasion of Afghanistan and the USA PATRIOT Act. The Republican Party fared well in the 2002 midterm elections, solidifying its hold on the House and regaining control of the Senate, in the run-up to the war in Iraq. This marked just the third time since the Civil War that the party in control of the White House gained seats in both houses of Congress in a midterm election (others were 1902 and 1934). On November 2, 2004, Bush was re-elected to a second term, receiving 51% of the popular vote and becoming the first presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988. Republicans gained additional seats in both houses of Congress, leaving Democrats again in the minority. The Republican 2004 political platform was titled "A Safer World and a More Hopeful America".[http://www.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf] It expressed commitment to:
- Winning the War on Terror
- Ushering in an Ownership Era
- Building an Innovative Economy to Compete in the World
- Strengthening Our Communities
- Protecting Our Families

Current structure and composition

The Republican National Committee (RNC) of the United States is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as for coordinating fundraising and election strategy. There are similar committees in every U.S. state and most U.S. counties (though in some states, party organization lower than state-level is arranged by legislative districts). It is the counterpart of the Democratic National Committee. The chairman of the RNC, since January of 2005, is Ken Mehlman. The Republican Party also has fundraising and strategy committees for House races (National Republican Congressional Committee), Senate races (National Republican Senatorial Committee), and gubernatorial races (Republican Governors Association).

Factions

Republican Governors Association Defining the views of any "faction" of any large political party is difficult at best, and any attempt to apply labels within a single political party is subject to some oversimplification. Nevertheless, there are several ideological groups recognized by some in the modern-day GOP, including the social conservatives, Republican In Name Only, paleoconservatives, neoconservatives, moderates, fiscal conservatives, Log Cabin Republicans, and libertarians.

Future trends, realignment?

Thus, as of 2006, Republicans will have controlled the White House for 26 of the previous 38 years, and both houses of Congress since 1994 (except for over a year in the Senate), leading some Conservative commentators to speculate about a permanent political realignment along the lines of the presidential election of 1896, in which Mark Hanna helped William McKinley construct a Republican majority that lasted for the next 36 years — Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political advisor, has been reported to be a keen student of this election. Evidence supporting this view includes Bush's relative success among Hispanic voters, winning 35% of their vote in 2000 and 44% in 2004, although the latter figure has been questioned by some analysts (most notably the anti-immigration Steve Sailer, whose analysis of several exit polls placed Hispanic support for Bush in 2004 at a maximum of 39%), and Bush's victory in 2004 in ninety-seven of the hundred fastest-growing counties in the country, evidence of Republican strength in quickly growing exurbs and in the booming metropolitan areas of the South. By 2010, the United States Census predicts that state population changes will cause states that voted for Bush in 2004 to gain six Congressional seats and electoral votes, while states that voted for Kerry will lose six.[http://www.willisms.com/archives/2005/06/checking_in_on_1.html] Others, such as left-wing commentators Ruy Teixeira and John Judis see prospects of a Republican realignment as unlikely, given the relative decrease in the proportion of white and rural voters, who traditionally have supported the GOP, and noting that Democrats have tended to win healthy majorities among Hispanics, African Americans, and city dwellers (among African American voters, Bush — like all recent Republican presidential candidates — lost overwhelmingly both times, though he did manage to increase his support from 9% in 2000 to 11% in 2004). Critics claim that an inconsistency in the views held within the Republican Party, which they see as a dramatic difference between anti-government libertarians and social conservatives, will undermine the Party's success. There are several outreach campaigns to attract more minorities to register Republican. Notably, that the head of the NAACP for Florida's Orange County, Derrick Wallace has responded to GOP outreach efforts by changing his party affiliation to Republican.[http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-maxwell1705nov17,0,2971218.column?coll=orl-news-col] There are other notable minorities who attract other minorities to the GOP. [http://www.gop.com/Teams/AfricanAmericans/]

Presidential tickets

Other noted Republicans

Present-day


- George Allen, Senator from Virginia.
- Howard Baker, Ambassador to Japan and former senator.
- Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi and former chair of the Republican National Committee.
- Michael Bloomberg, media entrepreneur and Mayor of New York City/ RINO.
- Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida.
- Saxby Chambliss, Senator from Georgia.
- Norm Coleman, Senator from Minnesota.
- Tom DeLay, former House Majority Leader, from Texas.
- Elizabeth Dole, Senator from North Carolina, former Labor Secretary and Transportation Secretary, and former presidential candidate.
- John Engler, former Governor of Michigan and current head of National Association of Manufacturers.
- Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, from Tennessee.
- Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, from Georgia.
- Phil Gramm, former Senator from Texas.
- Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York/RINO.
- Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State.
- Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, from Illinois.
- Jesse Helms, former Senator from North Carolina.
- Mike Huckabee, current Governor of Arkansas.
- Thomas Kean, former Governor from New Jersey.
- Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State.
- Trent Lott, former Senate Majority Leader, from Mississippi.
- John McCain, Senator from Arizona and former presidential candidate.
- George Pataki, Governor of New York.
- Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota.
- Colin Powell, former Secretary of State.
- Dan Quayle, former Vice President.
- Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security Secretary and former Governor of Pennsylvania.
- Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State.
- Dana Rohrabacher, Representative from California.
- Karl Rove, president George W. Bush's chief political strategist and deputy chief of staff.
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense.
- Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina.
- Rick Santorum, Senator from Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
- George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury.
- Arlen Specter, Senator from Pennsylvania.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California.
- Theodore Stevens, president pro tempore of the U.S. senate.
- Caspar Weinberger. former Secretary of Defense.
- Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
- Pete Wilson, former Governor of California.

Historical


- James G. Blaine (1830 - 1893), former Senator from Maine and Presidential candidate
- John Connally (1917 - 1993), a Governor of Texas
- Joseph Gurney Cannon (1836 - 1926), Speaker of the House
- Charles Curtis (1860 - 1936), Vice President
- Charles G. Dawes (1865 - 1951), Vice President
- George Frisbie Hoar (1826 - 1904), Senator from Massachusetts
- Robert G. Ingersoll (1833 - 1899), political activist
- Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924) Senator from Massachusetts
- Joseph McCarthy (1908 - 1957), Senator from Wisconsin and noted anti-communist
- Thomas Brackett Reed (1839 - 1902), Speaker of the House
- Nelson Rockefeller (1908 - 1979), Vice President, Governor of New York, and repeated presidential candidate
- Leland Stanford (1824 - 1893), Governor of California, Senator, and founder of Stanford University
- Robert Alphonso Taft (1889 - 1953), Senator and former presidential candidate
- Strom Thurmond (1902 - 2003), the oldest serving Senator in history (from South Carolina)
- Arthur H. Vandenberg (1884 - 1951), Senator from Michigan
- Earl Warren (1891 - 1974), Governor of California and Chief Justice of the United States

Lists


- List of African American Republicans
- List of Latino Republicans
- List of state Republican Parties in the U.S.
- List of Republican National Conventions
- List of liberal U.S. Republicans
- List of Republican celebrities

See also


- Republican National Convention
- College Republicans
- List of Republican Party Presidential nominees
- Republican Liberty Caucus
- Log Cabin Republicans
- Ripon Society
- South Park Republicans
- Rockefeller Republican
- Radical Republican
- International Democrat Union, of which the Republican Party is a member
- Teenage Republicans

External links


- [http://www.rnc.org/ Republican National Committee]
  - [http://www.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf 2004 Platform] (PDF format)
- [http://www.crnc.org/ College Republican National Committee]
- [http://www.savethegop.com/ SavetheGOP.com]
- [http://www.pachyderms.org/ Grand Order of Pachyderm Clubs]
- [http://www.gopwing.com/ National Federation of Republican Assemblies]
- [http://www.republicanmainstreet.org/ Republican Main Street Partnership]
- [http://www.rlc.org/ Republican Liberty Caucus]
- [http://www.RepublicanIssues.com/ Republican Issues Campaign]
- [http://www.GOPToday.com/ Americans for a Republican Majority]
- [http://www.RepublicanLeadership.org/ Republican Leadership Coalition]
- [http://www.GOPinion.com/ GOPinion], conservative news from around the web
- [http://www.yrnf.com/ Young Republican National Federation]
- Thomas Frank, New Statesman, 30 August 2004, [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4703_133/ai_n6247127 "Bush, the working class hero"] - How the Republicans captured the working class vote

Scholarly Secondary Sources


- American National Biography (20 volumes, 1999) covers all politicians no longer alive; online at many academic libraries.
- Barone, Michael, and Grant Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 2006: The Senators, the Representatives and the Governors: Their Records and Election Results, Their States and Districts (2005) covers all the live politicians with amazing detail.
- Ehrman, John, The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (2005)
- Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=90104191 online at Questia]
- Frank, Thomas. What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2005), an insightful but unflattering appraisal.
- Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (1987).
- Gould, Lewis. Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (2003), the best overview.
- Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (1971)
- Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (2001) well balanced scholarly synthesis.
- Lamis, Alexander P. ed. Southern Politics in the 1990s (1999)
- Mayer, George H. The Republican Party, 1854-1966. 2d ed. (1967), older, well-balanced narrative.
- Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (1997) well balanced scholarly synthesis.
- Patterson, James T. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore (2005) well balanced scholarly synthesis.
- Patterson, James T. Mr. Republican;: A biography of Robert A. Taft (1972)
- Rutland, Robert Allen. The Republicans: From Lincoln to Bush (1996), less useful than Gould.
- Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. ed. History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 (various multivolume editions, latest is 2001). For each election includes good scholarly history and selection of primary document. Essays on the most important election are reprinted in Schlesinger, The Coming to Power: Critical presidential elections in American history (1972)
- Silbey, Joel H. The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (1991) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94090777 online at Questia]
- Teixeira, Ruy and John B. Judis. The Emerging Democratic Majority, (2002) ISBN 0743254783, by two liberal Democrats.
- Wooldridge, Adrian and John Micklethwait. The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America sophisticated study by two British journalists (2004).

Primary Sources


- Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. ed. History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1984 (various multivolume editions, 1986). For each election includes good scholarly history and selection of primary document. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Category:Conservative parties Republican Category:U.S. Republican Party Category:International Democrat Union ko:공화당 (미국) ja:共和党 simple:United States Republican Party

Progressivism in the United States

Progressivism in the United States

Overview

Progressivism refers to two political phenomena:

Populist Political Progressivism

Historically, this represents distrust of concentrations of power in the hands of politicians, corporations, wealthy families, and special interest groups as represented by the candidacies of economic philosopher Henry George and the Single Tax movement, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and the Bull-Moose Party, the Cleveland mayoral administration of Tom L. Johnson, Louisiana Governor Huey Long and the Share Our Wealth movement, and in the early nineties by consumer lawyer Ralph Nader, billionaire Presidential candidate Ross Perot, and his Reform Party. In modern terminology this is generally called Populism, which can range from the political left to the political right.

Ideological or Modern Left Progressivism

This is a cluster of political, activist, and media organizations ranging from left-liberal to democratic socialism. Significant media include The Progressive magazine, and the American Prospect. Modern Left Progressivism includes several political figures including Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, and Peter Camejo. Also in this category are many leaders in the women's movement, labor movement, anti-globalization movement, civil rights movement, environmental movement, immigrant rights movement, and gay and lesbian rights movement. Other well-known progressives include Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Greg Palast, George Lakoff, Michael Lerner, Suzanne Pharr, and Urvashi Vaid. Media voices for the Progressive Movement in the United States include Barbara Ehrenreich, Al Franken, Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Miller, Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes, Betsy Rosenberg, and Ed Schultz. Modern day issues for "progressives" can include: ecology, pollution control, publicly-funded healthcare, cessation of the death penalty, affordable housing, proportional representation, instant runoff voting, fusion candidates, a vital Social Security System, alternative (sustainable) energy sources, "smart growth" urban development, and unicameral legislature (closing state senates and the U.S. Senate as per a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision against state senate districts representing land rather than representing people). Examples of progressive texts include: "New Age Politics" by Mark Satin; "Why Americans Hate Politics" by E.J. Dione, Jr; "Community Building: Renewing Spirit & Learning in Business" edited by Kazimierz Gozdz; and "Ecopolitics: Building a Green Society" by Daniel Coleman. The work of Ralph Nader reflects a blend of progressive left politics, consumerism, and right-wing populism reminiscent of the historic aspects of Populist Political Progressivism.

History

In the United States, the term progressive can be traced back to the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century, when certain politicians (see Theodore Roosevelt, Bull-Moose Republicans, and the United States Progressive Party) and civilians pushed for better working conditions for the average worker, better living conditions for the poor, the cleaning up of corruption in politics, environmental conservation and other issues. The "progressives" of Teddy Roosevelt's day were different from most Democrats are today. The government social welfare policies of Teddy's cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Conservation Corps, Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electric, etal), are examples of the changing usage of the word. The Four Original Goals of Progressivism: # Protecting social welfare - YMCA # Promoting moral improvement - prohibition of alcohol # creating economic reform - change of individual behavior # fostering efficiency - "Taylorism"

See also


- United States Progressive Party
- The Center for American Progress
- Progressive Christianity
- American liberalism

External links


- [http://www.americanprogress.org The Center for American Progress], a Washington, D.C.-based think tank
- [http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/23706/ "What Is Progressive?"], [http://www.alternet.org/ AlterNet] opinion piece, July 25th 2005
- [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0630-20.htm Common Dreams list of progressive websites by popularity]
- [http://rooseveltinstitution.org The Roosevelt Institution], a progressive student think tank
- [http://www.progressiveu.org Progressive U], a student political weblog Category:Progressivism Category:Political history of the United States

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party, founded in 1792, is the longest-standing political party in the world. It is one of the two major parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party. Currently it is the minority party in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. Democrats control 20 state legislatures, as do the Republicans (nine states have different parties in control of the upper and lower chambers, while Nebraska's unicameral legislature is elected on a nonpartisan basis). In 2005, the Democrats regained a majority of legislative seats nationwide. Of the two major U.S. parties, the Democratic Party is to the left of the Republican Party, though its politics are not as consistently leftist as the traditional social democratic and labor parties in much of the world. The Democratic Party is more notably factional than many major parties in the industrialized world, partly because American political parties in general do not have as much official power to control members as political parties in many other countries, and partly because the United States does not have a parliamentary goverment.

History

Beginnings

labor-1837).]] The Democratic Party's origins lie in the original Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792. Today, that party is usually referred to as the "Democratic-Republican Party" to avoid confusion. After the disintegration of the Federalist Party, the Democratic-Republicans were the only major party in American politics. For 20 years, different factions of the party contended for the presidency, whose candidates were nominated by congressional caucuses. In 1824, a particularly bitter election was thrown to the House of Representatives, and won by John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. Jackson, recovering from his defeat, gathered together prominent leaders, including Martin Van Buren of New York and even Vice President John C. Calhoun to support his next bid for the presidency. By the election of 1828, the unified party broke into two. One became the National Republican Party, and backed the incumbent President, and the other, which became known as the Democratic Party, after their insistence that the President hold a national mandate from the people, backed Andrew Jackson. The National Republican faction became the Whig Party (after their opposition to "King Andrew"), which would disintegrate in the 1850s when dissident Whigs and Northern Democrats formed the Republican Party.

Antebellum

Initially the Democratic Party was a coalition between Western pioneers in the Ohio River valley and Illinois - the "North West" of the U.S. at that time - and Southern planters and agrarians from the Jeffersonian coalition. This coalition was very similar to the one that Jefferson and Madison had worked to create, and lead to the belief that Jackson, and not John Quincy Adams, represented a continuous "Jeffersonian" tradition. This was in opposition to the Federalist and Hamiltonian conception of government which Adams was said to represent. The key issues were election access and the Bank of the United States. The Jeffersonians had opposed the first bank, but had allowed it to continue for 20 years of their time in power. The issue of the Bank, and tariffs would be the central domestic policy issue from 1828 to 1850, even though it was increasingly overshadowed by expansion and nativism in the run up to the Civil War. The Democratic Party would lose the presidency to William Henry Harrison, only to gain it back when his Vice President took office, and proceeded to enact many policies the party favored. James Polk would solidify the party's hold on power with a coalition that was increasingly based on holding a solid South and taking enough states in the North to win national power. The party also became increasingly associated with continuation of slavery, including pressing for more and more aggressive laws to enforce the recapture of enslaved individuals who had escaped, and for more of the Great Plains to be opened to slavery. This ran into the Missouri Compromise, which had set a free line, north of which slavery would be prohibited, in return for keeping a balance of power in the Senate. With the disintegration of the Whig Party in 1856 into two factions, the American Party of Millard Fillmore and the Republican Party whose first candidate was John Fremont, it seemed as if the Democratic Party would have a permanent dominance of political power.

Civil War and Reconstruction

In the 1850s, following the disintegration of the Whig Party, the Democratic Party became increasingly divided, with its Southern wing staunchly advocating the expansion of slavery into new territories, in opposition to the newly founded Republican Party, which sought to prohibit such expansion. Democrats in the Northern states joined the Republicans in opposing the expansion of slavery, and at the 1860 nominating convention the Party split and nominated two candidates (see U.S. presidential election, 1860). As a result, the Democrats went down to defeat with the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, a link in the chain of events leading up to the Civil War. During the war, Northern Democrats divided into two factions, War Democrats, who supported the military policies of President Abraham Lincoln, and Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. After 1864, the Democratic Party's main opposition has come from the modern Republican Party. The Democrats were shattered by the war but nevertheless benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. Once Reconstruction ended, and the disenfranchisement of blacks was re-established, the region was known as the "Solid South" for nearly a century because it reliably voted Democratic and there was, in many places, effectively only one party, there being no significant Republican presence. Though Republicans continued to control the White House until 1885, the Democrats remained competitive, especially in the mid-Atlantic and lower Midwest, and controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland, the reforming Democratic Governor of New York, won the Presidency, a feat he repeated in 1892, having lost (but won the popular vote) in the election of 1888 (as had Samuel J. Tilden in the election of 1876).

Populism and Republican dominance

In the presidential election of 1896, widely regarded as a political realignment, Democrats favoring Free Silver defeated their conservative counterparts and succeeded in nominating William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (as did the agrarian Populist Party). Bryan, perhaps best known for his "Cross of Gold" speech delivered at the 1896 convention, waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern monied interests, but lost to Republican William McKinley in an election which was to prove decisive: the Republicans controlled the presidency for 28 of the following 36 years.

The New Deal

William McKinley The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression set the stage for a more progressive government and Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the election of 1932, campaigning on a platform of "Relief, Recovery, and Reform". This came to be termed "The New Deal" after a phrase in his acceptance speech. The Democrats also swept to large majorities in both houses of Congress, and among state Governors. Roosevelt altered the nature of the Party, away from laissez-faire capitalism, and towards an ideology of economic regulation and insurance against hardship. After winning re-election in 1936, Roosevelt embarked on an ambitious legislative program that came to be called "The Second New Deal." He was stymied, however, by an alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats, as well as by the Supreme Court. Frustrated by the conservative wing of his own party, Roosevelt made an attempt to rid himself of it; in 1938, he actively campaigned against five incumbent conservative Democratic senators, and to appoint more justices to the Court. However, Roosevelt's attempt to chastise the conservatives failed when all five senators won re-election despite Roosevelt's efforts, and his attempts to add justices to the Court became derisively known as "Court Packing". Roosevelt's New Deal programs focused on job creation through public works projects as well as on social welfare programs such as Social Security. It also included sweeping reforms to the banking system, work regulation, transportation, communications, stock markets and attempts to regulate prices. His policies soon paid off by uniting a diverse coalition of Democratic voters called the New Deal Coalition, which included labor unions, minorities (most significantly, Catholics and Jews), and liberals. This united voter base allowed Democrats to be elected to Congress and the presidency for much of the next 30 years. Under Roosevelt, the Democratic Party became identified more closely with modern liberalism, which included the promotion of social welfare, civil rights, and regulation of the economy.

Civil Rights Movement

In 1924 at the Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan was introduced. After much debate, the resolution failed by just a single vote. This resolution later passed during the 1948 Democratic National Convention as part of a larger resolution endorsing civil rights. civil rights when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.]] The New Deal Coalition began to fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights, upsetting the party's traditional base of conservative Southern Democrats. After Harry Truman's platform showed support for civil rights and anti-segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National Convention, many Southern Democratic delegates decided to split from the Party and formed the "Dixiecrats", led by South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond. Over the next few years, many conservative Democrats in the "Solid South" drifted away from the party. On the other hand, African Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party", shifted to the Democratic Party due to its New Deal economic policies. The national party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, the Republicans were beginning their Southern strategy, which aimed to solidify the Republican Party's electoral hold over conservative white Southerners. Southern Democrats took notice of the fact that 1964 Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act on states rights grounds, and in the presidential election of 1964, Goldwater's only electoral victories outside his home state of Arizona were in the states of the Deep South. The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party became evident in the 1968 Presidential election when every former Confederate state except Texas voted for either Republican Richard Nixon or independent George Wallace, the latter a former Southern Democrat. Defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey's electoral votes came mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic shift from the 1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican candidate's electoral votes were mainly concentrated in the Northern states.

1970s

In 1972, the Democrats nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern as the Party's presidential candidate on a platform which advocated, among other things, U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans. McGovern was defeated in a landslide by incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon, the former winning only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. By 1976, however, things had changed dramatically. Nixon, under criticism during the Watergate scandal, resigned from the presidency in 1974. Prior to that, his Vice President, Spiro Agnew had been forced out by a separate scandal. After Agnew resigned, Nixon appointed Gerald Ford, a Republican Representative from Michigan as Agnew's replacement. Thus, when Nixon resigned, Ford became the first President in the nation's history to have been neither elected President nor Vice President. Ford soon pardoned Nixon. Mistrust of the administration, complicated by a combination of economic recession and inflation, sometimes called "stagflation," led to Ford's defeat in 1976 to Jimmy Carter, a former Governor of Georgia. In 1980, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan after serving one term in office.

1980s

Instrumental in the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1980, were Democrats who supported many conservative policies. The "Reagan Democrats" were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterwards, but they voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. They were mostly white ethnics in the Northeast who were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion, and to his strong foreign policy. They did not continue to vote Republican in 1992 or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not used to describe southern whites who became permanent Republicans in presidential elections. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster analyzed white ethnic voters, largely unionized auto workers, in suburban Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for Kennedy in 1960 and 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans and the very poor. Bill Clinton targeted the Reagan Democrats with considerable success in 1992 and 1996. The failure to hold the Reagan Democrats and the white South led to the final collapse of the New Deal coalition. Reagan carried 49 states against former Vice President and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, a New Deal stalwart, in 1984. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, running not as a New Dealer but as an efficiency expert in public adminsitration, lost by a landslide in 1988 to Vice President George H. W. Bush. In response to these landslide defeats, the Democratic Leadership Council was created. It worked to move the Party rightwards to the ideological center. With the Party retaining left-of-center supporters as well as supporters holding moderate or conservative views on some issues, the Democrats became generally a catch all party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans.

1990s

catch all party In 1992, for the first time in 12 years, the United States elected a Democrat to the White House. They seemingly revived themselves only to lose both the House and Senate in the mid-year 1994 elections. While President Bill Clinton claimed and got credit for a balanced federal budget and welfare reform, congressional Republicans won on policy throughout the 1990’s. Clinton for example vetoed two welfare reform bills before signing the third, largely the same, right before the 1996 presidential elections. Labor unions, which had been steadily losing membership since the 1960s, found they had also lost political clout inside the Democratic Party: Clinton enacted the NAFTA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico over the strong objection of these labor unions, much to the disappointment of those on the left of the Party. When the DLC attempted to move the Democratic agenda in favor of more