Top 5 Historical Facts of Republican Party

1. The Republican Party is usually associated with the election of Abraham Lincoln suggesting that Lincoln was a radical abolitionist. However, Lincoln was assuming the role of a moderate figure in the Republican Party in those days. In the election of 1864, radical republicans wanted to punish the South and they were Benjamin F. Wade, Henry W. Davis, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Edwin M. Stanton. The moderate republicans under Lincoln who supported the policy of leniency gained the upper hand in the party. They gained more support after the assassination of Lincoln because his successor Andrew Johnson implemented a moderate program of reconstruction.
2. In the election of 1868, the victory of Ulysses S. Grant paved the way for the dominion of the radical republicans. However, a new split was formed after the excesses of the radical republicans and the open scandals of the administration. These vents paved the way for the emergence of the Liberal Republican Party. However, in the election of 1872, its candidate, Horace Greeley who was also supported by the Democrats, was not popular enough to defeat Grant, and corruption became even more widespread.
3. In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt, a conservative republican won the presidency and implemented policies championing the gold standard and other conservative economic doctrines. Moreover, Roosevelt led the US to enter a controversial imperialist path like starting the Spanish-American War. The consequent rift between conservative and moderate republicans made way for the election of the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson in 1912. In 1920, the republicans nominated Warren G. Harding who managed to win the elections, but his administration was also plagued by the problem of corruption.
4. In 1928, the republican Herbert C. Hoover won the elections, but was blamed for the disastrous economic depression after the crash of the stock markets in 1928. The American electorate the put the democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in office in 1932. The isolationist republicans could not break the democrats from holding on to the presidency for many years. It was not until 1952 before the republicans won back the presidency with its moderate conservative candidate General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
5. For the first time since 1836, an incumbent republican Vice President, Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president in 1960. Nixon, however, was defeated by the popular Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy. But Nixon was elected in 1968 thanks to the disaffection over the Vietnam War. Nixon embarked on a foreign policy marked by a limited détente with the Soviet Union and China combined with a conservative domestic program characterized by decentralization of political power.

The Watergate affair forced Nixon to resign, but his successor Gerald R. Ford was not able to dissociate the republicans from scandals and lost the elections in 1974. However, the republicans managed to win back the presidency through the conservative republicans Ronald Reagan and his successor George W. Bush over a period a twelve years (1980-1992). Both republicans presided over administrations championing supply-side economic programs of budget and tax cuts. President Reagan was also the key figure in presiding over the largest military buildup during peace time in American history.