March 21, 2024
The Republicans have always been welcoming of people of many different backgrounds.
The first black man ever to be elected to the U.S. Congress, Joseph Rainey, was a Republican. So was the first black man ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, Hiram Revels. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and the greatest anti-slavery advocate of all time identified as an independent inside of the Republican Party. Booker T. Washington, the great black educator and civil rights leader, who was also a former slave, was a Republican.
All of these persons were active during the1800’s. In more recent times, Colin Powell became the first black Secretary of State in 2005. He was appointed to that position by George W. Bush, a Republican President. The first black woman to hold the office of Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was later appointed by Bush to take Powell's place after Powell finished serving in that office. Rice was and is a dedicated member of the Republican Party.
The 2016 presidential election also featured Republican candidates from many different ethnic backgrounds. The 2020 Washington State Gubernatorial GOP candidate lineup had more than three candidates from different ethnic backgrounds. Ben Carson, the famous neurosurgeon, who is black, was a strong contender in the contest for the presidency in that year. Two other important figures in the 2016 race for the Republican presidential nomination were Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who are both Hispanic.
A 2020 poll from Asian Americans Advancing Justice found that 48% of Vietnamese Americans intended to vote for Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in that year's presidential election.
The Republican Party was also founded to advance the right to vote and to run for public office. Important early feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were both Republicans. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman ever elected to U.S. Congress, was a Republican. The first and only female governors of Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and South Carolina were all Republicans.
Most importantly, the Republican Party is defined by a diversity of ideas. When it was created some 170 years ago, it started as a combination of several different, small political parties. These parties included the Free-Soil Party, the Locofocos, and the Working Men's Party.
The Free-Soil Party was mainly concerned with stopping slavery from being established in the new U.S. states. The Locofocos were devoted to fighting political corruption in New York City. The Working Men's Party was an early labor union that wanted to change the law to increase the number of hours allowed per day. All of these factions were united by a desire to abolish slavery in the United States.
In the 1980s, a similarly diverse array of different groups came together to elect Ronald Reagan, a Republican, as President of the United States of America. This alliance, called a Coalition, was composed of social conservatives, civil libertarians, and the foreign policy hawks.
The social conservatives believed in traditional morality and valued religious freedom. The civil libertarians supported reduced government spending, low taxes, and minimal regulations on business. The foreign policy hawks were in favor of an aggressive attitude toward the Soviet Union and believed that the Soviets could be defeated.
This belief later turned out to be correct when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
These groups of people, whether they were separated by race, gender, or worldview, were all able to come together as Republicans because they all wanted to do one thing: to give Freedom to women and men!
Martin Lee Wheeler
FREEDOM!