Republican Party

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States.. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the Grand Old Party or the GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. The party's platform is generally considered right of center in the U.S. political spectrum.

Founded in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers,^[9] the Republican Party quickly surpassed the Whig Party as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party.^[

Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan free labor, free land, free men. "Free labor" referred to the Republican belief in a mobile middle class that left the workforce and set up small businesses.

In the 21st century the Republican Party is defined by social conservatism, a Preemptive war foreign policy to defeat terrorism and promote global democracy, a more powerful executive branch, tax cuts, gun rights and border sovereignty, and deregulation of industry.

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.