Republican Party Ideals and the 2012 Presidential Race

There’s a lot of talk these days, most of it fiction, about the Republican Party, what it stands for and what it wants “to do” with America and Americans.
This is not all the result of Mitt Romney naming Paul Ryan as his VP running mate in the 2102 presidential race. Talking fast and loose about the GOP has been in fashion ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, during a depression that Republicans were blamed for, even though, like today, they were more victims, as was everyone else in the world, than perpetrators.
And, by the way, although we all today use the letters GOP to mean Grand Old Party, it may be that originally, when the acronym was created in 1875, the G stood for Gallant - and that’s not bad, either.
And, while we’re digging around in the GOP’s history, we all know that the symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant.
But, why? Well, during the mid-term elections in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Ulysses S. Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term, which the Founders had not envisioned, because of President Washington’s stern advice that two terms is enough. Should we add that it was finally Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt who did that, adding a third and a fourth term, making it necessary to amend the Constitution to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. But, as for the elephant, the Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast depicted a Democratic donkey failing to scare a Republican elephant – and both symbols stuck.
But, what does it really mean to be a Republican?
If had to choose just three ideas, they would be -- individual liberty, citizen responsibility, and equality.
The GOP actually started with people who opposed slavery. They were ordinary people who could not accept the notion that men had any right to oppress, let alone own as property, their fellow man. In the early 1850’s, these anti-slavery activists teamed up with rugged pioneers looking to settle in western lands, free of government charges. “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men,” was their slogan.
So, it was a profound opposition to human enslavement and government tyranny that made liberty loving Americans give birth to the Republican Party.
The name “Republican” was chosen because it meant equality and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. In 1856, the GOP became a national party by nominating John C. Fremont for President. He lost.
But, four years later, with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Republican Party was firmly established as a major political party.
In 1861, the Civil War exploded onto the American scene, lasting four terrible years. During the Civil War, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. The Republicans then worked to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the laws; and the Fifteenth, which helped secure voting rights for African-Americans.
All of these feats preserved the fundamental freedoms that the Founders had envisioned and that America continues to enjoy today.
The GOP also played a leading role in securing women’s right to vote. In 1896, the Republican Party was the first major political party to support women’s suffrage. When the 19th Amendment finally was added to the Constitution, 26 of the 36 state legislatures that voted to ratify it were under Republican control. The first woman elected to Congress in 1917 was a Republican, Jeanette Rankin from Montana.
So it was by the groundbreaking beliefs and work of Republicans that color and gender barriers were first demolished in America.
The Republican Party’s beliefs are simple and deeply felt by its adherents:

- individuals, not government, make the best decisions, when they are guaranteed the right to speak and discuss freely and then vote;
- all people are entitled to equal rights; race, color and religious convictions do not enter into the granting of these fundamental human rights;
- decisions are best made close to home, locally, by the people who best understand the problem and the right solution for them.

And, finally, Republicans have always fought to constrain the size of government, both federal and local. When confronted with problems and decisions, the GOP chooses to reduce the size of government, streamline bureaucracy, and return power to individual states. This fundamental belief is in harmony with both the Constitution and the Republican principle that individuals are to be protected from government and their liberties preserved. The Republican Party, since its origin, has been at the forefront of the fight for individuals’ rights in opposition to large, intrusive government.
Why, dear readers, do I write all the today? Because we are witnessing a deliberate and vicious attack on Republican principles and political motives that needs to be put into historical context.
The Obama team is trying its best to divide and conquer by using the groups of Americans who are the weakest and most in need of support -- by deliberately scaring senior citizens and the poor and jobless who are being told by the Obama election team that the GOP presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, will leave them without health care, without jobs, without a home and without anyone in Washington who cares what happens to them.
There is no Republican - not one - anywhere in America who would support such candidates or permit such disgraceful actions.
There is no Republican - not one - anywhere in America who wants to elect the Romney-Ryan team so that other Americans can be hurt and mistreated.
There is no Republican - not one - anywhere in America who would permit anything like the fantasies concocted by Obama and his team to happen.
That is the real message in this 2012 election.
Republicans are trying to speak truthfully, to work with everyone in America to find the best, most American way out of the mess we are in today.
If Medicare needs to be fixed, and it must be, then the Romney-Ryan team will be sure that no one is left out.
If the budget needs to be cut because we are running up astronomical debt every year, year after year, then the Romney-Ryan team will make everyone safe by keeping our military strong, while cutting out waste, eliminating runaway welfare which no longer seems to want to help those caught in its net to get out and regain their dignity, and by making sure that the tax code is re-designed to support these goals, not by taxing the poor but by taxing everyone fairly and seeing to it that the tax system makes it possible to create the jobs that Americans so desperately need.
They are Republicans - Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. They believe in the principles of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan. They want to save the great nation that individual liberty and freedom to succeed created.
They want, above all, to represent every American -- not just the rich, not just businesses, not just Republicans. They want to represent Americans who live in the heartland, and in the great cities, and in decaying communities ruined because their jobs disappeared, and in the small towns where people are struggling with problems that they have never faced before in trying to preserve their way of life.
The Romney-Ryan team wants to help poor Americans to grow their income so they can rejoin the march forward of the American Dream.
They want to help Americans of color and minorities who are now being left behind by an economy that Obama has run into the ground at their expense.
Do not be fooled. It is not too late to turn America around. But, it cannot be done by mirrors and accounting tricks. It will require hard work, cooperation and a renewal of the American spirit.
And that is what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are all about.