gogul:

> Republicanism is a social movement. The Republicans, a party of traitors.

I think that passing a simple condemnation of right wing republicanism is rather unfair. While I disagree with many of the things that Republicans (or Conservatives here in Canada and England) stand for, their place in history is different from what many people think. While the "neoconservatives" under George W. Bush are seen in a very negative light outside of the US, the history of the Republican Party is very interesting.

Back in the mid-19th century the Unites States had 3 political parties, and those were divided into factions:

The Whigs were a political party that followed the ideas of John Quincy Admas and they favored the modernization of industry and the banking system. Abraham Lincoln joined this party in 1832 and in 1837 he started campaigning against slavery.

The Republicans were divided into two camps. The "radical REpublicans" believed in agressive modernization of industry and in punishing the souther states harshly in accounts of slavery and the civil war. The "moderate Republicans" believed in a more lenient approach with the south and work to end slavery by reconstruction after the civil war.

The Democrats were divided into the "northern democrats" who favored an end of slavery but who refused to support war against the Confederacy. The "southern democrats" were the dominant political party in the south and they campaigned and fought to keep slavery alive.

Abraham Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856 and in 1861 he assumed office as the 16th president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln was extremely influential in the early development of the Republican Party and the ideological basis that led to the end of slavery. Abraham Lincoln also opposed the Mexican-American War and he saw that war as illegal and a form to grab land from Mexico through military expansion.

Lincoln's brilliance as a politician was based on his ability to reconcile several aspects of American politics at the time. He convinced the northern Democrats to stay out of the war, while he held off the aggressive radical Republicans who wanted the south crushed mercilessly. At the same time he moved popular support towards the moderate Republicans who wanted modernization and an end to slavery without crushing the south. As a Republican, Abraham Lincoln was without question the most brilliant politician the US had in the second half of the 19th century.

After the war the Republican party led reconstruction efforts and fought off the Ku Klux Klan which at the time had broad support through the south. The Republican Party came to dominate American politics through the second half of the 19th century.

It is very interesting because in the 19th century the southern states were dominated by the Democrats, while in more recent times the Republicans attract much of the vote in that part of the US.

The change in Republican politics started at around the time of Theodore Roosevelt. He had been Secretary of the Navy during the Spanish-American War and the expansion of American power into places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Phillippines and Panama gave him a view of the world in which American naval superiority was the best way to ensure that American political and economic interests were protected outside the US. It is out of his ideological stance that the Republican Party changed its main ideological basis from the 19th century moderates to the more radical views that we see today in the "neoconservatives".

During Theodore Roosevelt's presidency (1901-1909) there was a change in the Democrats too. Many of the "progressives" inside the Republican party defected to the democratic party in view of the rise in more radical Republicanism. This led to the defeat of the Republicans in 1912 when Woodrow Wilson became president under the Democrat Ticket.

As you can see, the Republicans were never quite the same way we see them today. Neither were the Democrats. The Republicans were moderate and became radical. The Democrats were reactionary and became progressive.