The 1850s saw in America the breakdown of the Jacksonian party system in the North and the emergence of a new sectional party--the Republicans--that succeeded the Whigs in the nation's two-party system. This monumental work uses demographic, voting, and other statistical analysis as well as the more traditional methods and sources of political history to trace the realignment of American politics in the 1850s and the birth of the Republican party. Gienapp powerfully demonstrates that the organization of the Republican party was a difficult, complex, and lengthy process and explains why, even after an inauspicious beginning, it ultimately became a potent political force. The study also reveals the crucial role of ethnocultural factors in the collapse of the second party system and thoroughly analyzes the struggle between nativism and antislavery for political dominance in the North. The volume concludes with the decisive triumph of the Republican party over the rival American party in the 1856 presidential election. Far-reaching in scope yet detailed in analysis, this is the definitive work on the formation of the Republican party in antebellum America.

The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike. But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's conservatives who are "Republicans in Name Only." Writing with passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation, Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney--father of Mitt Romney--conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to "listen to the voices from the ghetto." Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched history that reorients our understanding of our political past and present. Today, following the Republicans' loss of the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, moderates remain marginalized in the GOP and progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire consequences for all Americans. He has added a new afterword that considers the fallout from the 2012 elections.

The election of 2016 prompted journalists and political scientists to write obituaries for the Republican Party—or prophecies of a new dominance. But it was all rather familiar. Whenever one of our two great parties has a setback, we’ve heard: “This is the end of the Democratic Party,” or, “The Republican Party is going out of existence.” Yet both survive, and thrive. We have the oldest and third oldest political parties in the world—the Democratic Party founded in 1832 to reelect Andrew Jackson, the Republican Party founded in 1854 to oppose slavery in the territories. They are older than almost every American business, most American colleges, and many American churches. Both have seemed to face extinction in the past, and have rebounded to be competitive again. How have they managed it? Michael Barone, longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, brings a deep understanding of our electoral history to the question and finds a compelling answer. He illuminates how both parties have adapted, swiftly or haltingly, to shifting opinion and emerging issues, to economic change and cultural currents, to demographic flux. At the same time, each has maintained a constant character. The Republican Party appeals to “typical Americans” as understood at a given time, and the Democratic Party represents a coalition of “out-groups.” They are the yin and yang of American political life, together providing vehicles for expressing most citizens’ views in a nation that has always been culturally, religiously, economically, and ethnically diverse. The election that put Donald Trump in the White House may have appeared to signal a dramatic realignment, but in fact it involved less change in political allegiances than many before, and it does not portend doom for either party. How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t) astutely explains why these two oft-scorned institutions have been so resilient.

During a long period of the twentieth century, stretching from the Great Depression until the Reagan years, defeat generally characterized the electoral record of the Republican party. Although Republicans sometimes secured victory in presidential contests, a majority of Americans identified with the Democratic party, not the GOP. This book investigates how Republicans tackled the problem of their party's minority status and why their efforts to boost GOP fortunes usually ended in failure. At the heart of the Republicans' minority puzzle was the profound and persistent popularity of New Deal liberalism. This puzzle was stubbornly resistant to solution. Efforts to develop a Republican version of government activism met little success. Only the Democratic party's decline eventually created opportunities for Republican resurgence. This book is the first to offer a wide-ranging analysis of the topic, which is of central importance to any understanding of modern US political history.

In 1981, a Right Wing Republican at long last resided in the White House, presiding over what may prove to be the most fundamental restructuring of American political life since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fortunately, The Republican Right since 1945 now provides us with the necessary historical understanding of conservative Republicans. David Reinhard's dispassionate yet lively book recounts the Republican Right's political struggles from the death of FDR in 1945 to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Younger readers will discover that Right Wing Republicans are older than Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater and that some conservative Republicans once feared the overextension of American power abroad and the rise of the "garrison state" at home. Those old enough to remember when the Republican Right was called the "Old Guard" will rediscover the events and personalities of those earlier years, thanks to Reinhard's use of more than thirty five manuscript collections and the most recent historical writing. Not content to let this history end where traditional manuscript sources run thin, Reinhard has brought the story of the Republican Right Wing forward to President Ronald Reagan's inauguration, placing Right Wing Republican reaction to the Johnson and the Nixon-Ford years within the context of the earlier period and chronicling the electoral triumph of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Right. Students of the past and observers of the present will appreciate Reinhard's treatment of the always-troubled Nixon-Republican Right association; challenger Ronald Reagan's battle against President Gerald Ford in 1976; the decline of GOP moderation; and the rise of the New Right-Moral Majority forces and their relationship to the now ascendant Republican Right. Reinhard illuminates the conservative Republican past and thereby makes the current political scene more understandable. Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written, The Republican Right since 1945 will fascinate scholars and general readers alike.

This highly readable narrative history of the Republican Party profiles the G.O.P. from its emergence as an antislavery party during the 1850s to its current place as champion of political conservatism.