The Lost Republicans August 2013

The Republican Party has done an about-face in recent years.  The party was formed in 1854 as an antislavery alternative to the Whig and Democratic Parties and nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860 as its first presidential candidate.  After his assassination in 1865,  members pushed for far-reaching change in the South during Reconstruction to aid the newly freed slave. Nearly a hundred years later, in the 1950s and 1960s,  the G.O.P. backed Civil Rights,  a balanced federal budget, and created the Interstate Highway System to better ship goods and military hardware across state lines.  But in the Twenty-First Century,  The Grand Old Party has backtracked or changed course on critical issues.  Conservatives supported deficit spending during the Bush Administration by backing two costly wars abroad.  They even went along with voter ID laws at the height of the 2012 election despite repeated warnings that doing so could dilute minority voting strength in swing states like North Carolina,  Florida, and Ohio.  Finally,  modern Republicans have vehemently opposed President Obama,  seemingly out of spite,  which has undoubtedly slowed the economic recovery.  If the Republican Party doesn't mend its broken ways and take a lesson from the past,  it could lose again in 2016.