Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Republican Party
A long-time Republican-party insider and close student of its past discusses how the party has changed over the years—for better and for worse —and where it may be headed.
Jack Kemp was born in 1935 in Los Angeles; his father owned a small trucking company. He came of political age in a time and place that made it likely enough that he would become a lifelong Republican, and he did.
The two-party system, undreamt of by the founders of the Republic, has been one of its basic shaping forces ever since their time
Gargantuan, gross, and cynical, the patrician boss Boies Penrose descended from aristocracy to dominate Pennsylvania Republican politics for thirty years
The history of politics is a history of words. “Boss” is as American as “Santa Claus,” both words being Dutch in origin.
A good party is better than the best man that ever lived.” So said “Czar’ Thomas B. Reed, the formidable late-nineteenth-century Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Maria Monk’s lurid “disclosures” and Samuel Morse’s dire warnings launched a crusade of bigotry that almost won the White House
While Bryan stumped up and down the land, McKinley let the voters come to his lawn in Canton—and they came
In 1896, the depression which had followed the Panic of ’93 was in its third year. Debt, business failure, unemployment, and labor unrest were spreading; to many, revolution seemed just a step away.
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