The party's platform is generally based upon American conservatism,[11][12][13] in contrast to the Democratic Party, whose members endorse more liberal policies. American conservatism of the Republican Party is not wholly based upon rejection of the political ideology of liberalism; some principles of American conservatism are based on classical liberalism.[14] Rather, the Republican Party's conservatism is largely based upon its support of classical principles against the social liberalism of the Democratic Party that is considered American liberalism in contemporary American political discourse.[14]
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In 1994, Republicans won a majority in Congress for the first time in forty years.The Republican Party, also commonly called the GOP (for "Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. There have been 18 Republican presidents, the first being Abraham Lincoln, serving from 1861 to 1865, and the most recent being George W. Bush, serving from 2001 to 2009. The most recent Republican presidential nominee was former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
The first official party convention was held on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan. By 1858, the Republicans dominated nearly all Northern states. The Republican Party first came to power in 1860 with the election of Lincoln to the Presidency and Republicans in control of Congress and again, the Northern states. It oversaw the saving of the union, the end of slavery, and the provision of equal rights to all men in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877.
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