How the Republican Party went from Lincoln to Trump

Today's Republican Party opposes big government. It is culturally conservative. His demographic support is strongest among white voters and he typically dominates elections in the South. And its 2016 presidential candidate has been heavily criticized for inciting racial tensions. But things weren't always like this. However, over the last 160 years or so, the

party

has undergone a remarkable transformation from the

party

of Abraham Lincoln... to the party of Donald Trump. And to understand how the Republican Party came to be what it is today, you have to go back to when it was first born: in 1854, just seven years before the Civil War.

There are two parties at this time, the Whigs and the Democrats. The United States is rapidly expanding westward and there is intense debate over whether the new states should allow slavery. The Democratic Party, with strong support in the South, has become increasingly pro-slavery. But the Whigs are divided on the issue. His northern supporters actually feared that the growing number of slave states had too much political influence, which they feared could harm free white workers economically. So in 1854, the country is debating whether or not the new states of Kansas and Nebraska will allow slavery. They do not agree and the party ends up collapsing.

The former Northern Whigs form a new party that will fight against the expansion of slavery; They call it the Republican Party. In 1860, the Republican Party became increasingly powerful in the North, enough that a little-known Republican named Abraham Lincoln won the presidency. Although Lincoln promises that he will not interfere with slavery in the states that already have it, he and his party remain too anti-slavery for the South to tolerate. Thus, 11 Southern states secede from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America. The northern states decide to fight to keep the Union united and the Civil War ensues.

The result is a Northern victory and the abolition of slavery throughout the country. After the war, Republicans begin to fight to ensure that the freedmen of the South have rights. A year after Lincoln's assassination, the party passes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said black citizens have the same rights as whites. They fight to ensure that black men have the right to vote, with new laws and constitutional amendments. But something had happened during the Civil War that began to change the young Republican Party. Public spending during the war actually enriched many northern businessmen. Little by little, these wealthy financiers and industrialists are beginning to assume more and more of a leadership role in the Republican Party.

They want to stay in power and don't believe that fighting for black rights in a majority white country is the best way to do it. Meanwhile, the South resists these new racial reforms, often violently. And most white Republican voters and leaders now feel that they have done enough for black citizens in the South and that it was time to emphasize other issues. So in the 1870s, the party basically gave up on reforming the South and decided instead to leave it to its own devices, even if it meant that black citizens were oppressed and deprived of their newfound right to vote, and the region was politically dominated by whites.

Democrats. Fast forward to the new century. By the 1920s, the Republican Party had essentially become the party of big business. This worked quite well for them when the economy was booming, but not so well when the economy collapsed in 1929 and the Great Depression began. Franklin D. Roosevelt and other Democrats come to power and begin to dramatically expand the size and role of the federal government, in an attempt to fight the Depression and better provide for Americans. Republicans oppose this rapid expansion and define themselves as opponents of bigger government, an identity the party still maintains today. Then, entering the 1950s and 1960s, race and the South returned to the forefront of national politics, with the civil rights movement attempting to end segregation and ensure that blacks actually had the right to vote.

Civil rights is not a purely partisan issue, but rather a regional issue with northerners of both parties supporting it and southerners of both parties opposing it. Then, in 1964, it was Democratic President Lyndon Johnson who signed into law the Civil Rights Act. And it is Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater who opposes it, arguing that it expands government power too much. A massive change occurs. Black voters, many of whom had already turned away from the Republicans, are almost completely converted to their new supporters, the Democrats. And white voters in the South, who had been staunch Democrats, are beginning to really resent “big government” interference here and on other issues, like abortion rights and school prayer.

Over the next three decades, Southern whites defect to the Republican Party, making the South overwhelmingly Republican. In the 1980s, the party began to resemble the Republican Party we know today. Republicans elect Ronald Reagan, who promises to fight for business interests, lower taxes, and traditional family values. Then, as we begin the 21st century, the United States is undergoing a major demographic shift in the form of Hispanic immigration, both legal and illegal. Democrats and business elites tend to support reforming immigration laws so that more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States gain legal status. But “tough on immigration” policies and rhetoric are becoming popular on the Republican right.

Then, when Mitt Romney loses his bid for president in 2012, he is defeated among Hispanic voters: exit polls showed that 71% of them backed Barack Obama. And the Republican Party is starting to look more like a party for white voters in an increasingly nonwhite country. Given demographic trends, Republican leaders worry that if they continue to lose so many Hispanic voters, they will lose their chances of winning the presidency. So in 2013, some key Republicans in the Senate – including rising star Marco Rubio – collaborated with Democrats on an immigration reform bill that would give unauthorized immigrants a path to legal status.

But there is a huge backlash from the Republican Party's predominantly white base, which sees the bill as an “amnesty” for immigrants who broke the rules. This exacerbates Republican voters' distrust of their own party's leaders, which had already been growing. And that makes the political panorama of 2015 fertile ground for a figure like Donald Trump, an outsider businessman who wants to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Trump is not a traditional conservative, but he appealed to Republican primary voters' resentment and distrust of party elites, as well as his strong opposition to growing immigration trends. And although party leaders hated him, he gained enough support in the primaries to become the Republican presidential nominee.

Now, the Republican Party once again finds itself at a major crossroads as it attempts to confront the political challenges of the 21st century. The turn toward Trump and his ideas this year may be remembered as an aberration, and a new generation of Republican politicians may find a way to be more than the party of white resentment, rediscovering their roots as the party of Lincoln. . . But it's also possible that Trump is just the beginning, and that the party is increasingly tapping into white voters by appealing to racial tensions. It's up to Republican voters and leaders to decide what they want their party to be.