Republican Platform Research Articles

Immigration in the 2024 US presidential election campaign: policy stalemate, disinformation, and a call for mass deportation

Immigration has been one of the most contentious and defining issues of the 2024 presidential election, rivaled only by economic policy and national security. The Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, has largely succeeded in setting the terms of the debate – hammering away at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, with hyperbolic claims that she supports “open borders” and false accusations that the US is experiencing a wave of violent crime committed by migrants. Trump’s immigration rhetoric relies increasingly on lies, misinformation, and racist stereotypes. But his claim that immigration is “out of control” – and his insistence that firm measures are needed to address it – have become central to the Republican platform, and one of Trump’s most frequently repeated campaign promises is that he will deport millions of undocumented immigrants soon after taking office. Why is immigration such a controversial issue in the US? How have the different administrations dealt with it? Is it an overused issue in this campaign?

Surprise election for Trump connections

We exploit Donald Trump’s nonpolitical background and surprise election victory to identify the value of sudden presidential ties among S&P 500 firms. In our setting firms did not choose to become politically connected, so we identify treatment effects comparatively free of selection bias prevalent in this literature. Firms with presidential ties enjoyed greater abnormal returns around the 2016 election. Since Trump’s inauguration, connected firms had better performance, received more government contracts, and were less subject to unfavorable regulatory actions. We rule out a number of confounding factors, including industry designation, sensitivity to Republican platforms, campaign finance, and lobbying expenditures.

Presidential Power and Shareholder Wealth

We exploit Donald Trump’s nonpolitical background and surprise election victory to identify the value of sudden presidential ties among SP received more government contracts; and were less subject to unfavorable regulatory actions. We rule out a number of confounding factors, including industry designation, sensitivity to Republican platforms, campaign finance, and lobbying expenditures.

Hesitant Comrades: The Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement by Geoffrey Bell

Reviewed by: Hesitant Comrades: The Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement by Geoffrey Bell Patrick Smylie Geoffrey Bell, Hesitant Comrades: The Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement (London, Pluto Press 2016) Mainly focusing on the period between the 1916 Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, this is one of a spate of books concerned with the Irish revolution one hundred years on. The book is unique in that it cogently analyses the response of the British left to the revolution, rather than the participants in Ireland or the British government. It partly follows on from the author's earlier works (also published by Pluto) including The Protestants of Ulster (1976) and Troublesome Business: The Labour Party and the Irish Question (1982). These works along with The British in Ireland: A Suitable Case for a Withdrawal (1984) were probably shaped by Bell's socialist activism during the recent "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Hesitant Comrades, based on a PhD, is less polemical. Bell's prologue begins with an account of Trafalgar Square's "Bloody Sunday" of November 1887, a demonstration against British coercion in Ireland ending with violence on London streets, to introduce "the history of British radicalism identifying with the cause of Ireland." (x) The opening chapter discusses the Rising's gestation and the unsympathetic response of the British left, exemplified by the Socialist Labour Party's failure to provide an obituary for James Connolly, a former prominent member, following his execution. A further contextual chapter outlines Sinn Féin's electoral eclipsing of the Home Rule Party on a republican platform, and it places the increasingly deadly "Irish Question" in the context of the Russian Revolution, growing working-class consciousness, and industrial militancy in Britain. Subsequent thematic chapters provide a detailed account of the British left's hesitant response to the tumultuous events in Ireland. Bell devotes two chapters to the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress (tuc), while "Alternatives" deals with Communists, Fabians, and the Independent Labour Party. Other chapters incorporate "voices from below" or workers' perspectives; address contemporary debates about how socialists should respond to Irish nationalism, the Ulster question, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ultimately recognized the partition of Ireland. Hesitant Comrades emphasizes that the labour movement was critical of government policy and Bell disassociates it "from Britain's side in the Irish War of Independence. This was not their war." [End Page 300] (216) Nevertheless, Bell's main argument is that whilst large sections of the British working class were disturbed by their government's treatment of Ireland, the labour movement, with a few exceptions, failed even to attempt to provide leadership that could give voice to this sentiment. Rather, equivocation, confusion, and ultimately a disinclination actively to support Irish independence typified attitudes and approaches. Why? Bell convincingly points to ambivalence about the utility of Irish nationalism, limited comprehension of Irish complexities, and a strong desire that the issue would simply disappear. The Labour Party did actually move from support for Home Rule to advocating unconditional Irish self-determination. However, in 1920, the party's Executive backed away from the idea, since independence would make Ireland a military or naval menace to Great Britain. As Bell points out the "implication was that if the potential Irish 'menace' was not sorted out Labour would oppose any settlement." (72) This imperialist thinking had a left-wing corollary in the idea that since the Irish revolution was not "socialist," it deserved only qualified support. One communist organ observed that the "nationalist aspirations of the Irish workers … are dangerous illusions" (112) and Bell notes that leading Bolsheviks felt obliged to rebuke their British comrades for such sentiments. Bell outlines how discontinuity carried over into thinking on the "Ulster Question." Arguments for the region's exclusion from a Home Rule settlement, most forcibly made by the "reactionary" figure of Sir Edward Carson, were deemed as economic in basis by the British left and supportive Ulster protestant workers were the dupes of Belfast's capitalists. There was in fact little understanding of Ulster worker mentalities, and when anti-Catholic violence was brought to the attention of the tuc, their response was feeble. In 1920...

Creating A Nationwide Nonpartisan Initiative for Family Caregivers in Political Party Platforms.

Policymakers have been slow to support family caregivers, and political agendas mostly fail to address the cost burdens, impact on employment and productivity, and other challenges in taking on long-term care tasks. This project set out to raise policymakers' awareness of family caregivers through proposals to Republican and Democratic party platforms during the 2016 political season. The Family Caregiver Platform Project (FCPP) reviewed the state party platform submission process for Democratic and Republican parties in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We built a website to make each process understandable by caregiver advocates. We designed model submissions to help volunteers tailor a proposal and recruited caregiver advocates participating in their state process. Finally, we mobilized a ground operation in many states and followed the progress of submissions in each state, as well as the formation of the national platforms. In 39 states, at least one party, Republican or Democrat, hosted a state party platform process. As of September 2016 FCPP volunteers submitted proposals to 29 state parties in 22 states. Family caregiver language was added to eight state party platforms, one state party resolution, two bipartisan legislative resolutions, and one national party platform. The FCPP generated a non-partisan grassroots effort to educate and motivate policymakers to address caregiving issues and solutions. Democratic party leaders provided more opportunities to connect with political leaders, with seven Democratic parties and one Republican party, addressing family caregiver issues in their party platforms.

“Down with the Monarchy”: Iran’s Republican Moment of August 1953

The purpose of this article is to explore and analyze Iran’s “Republican Moment” of 16‒19 August 1953, arguably the last concerted effort to abolish the monarchy and establish a republican order in the county prior to the Revolution of 1978‒79. By drawing on a broad range of primary source materials that have thus far remained relatively understudied by existing scholarship, such as the political press of those crucial days, the essay will attempt to shed light on a number of significant domestic developments which impacted the outcome of the actual coup of 19 August 1953. A further attempt will be made to explain the importance of calls in favor of the Republic and the premier Mohammad Mosaddeq’s refusal to take heed of them. The paper will also explore the diverse origins of the Republican platform and its impact on both the urban crowd and the political elite.

Editor's Letter

Editor's Letter

Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Nation by Daniel W. Crofts

Reviewed by: Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Nation by Daniel W. Crofts Dwight T. Pitcaithley (bio) Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Nation. By Daniel W. Crofts. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. 356. $35.00 cloth; $34.99 ebook) On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as the sixteenth president of the United States. In the middle of his inaugural address he endorsed an amendment to the Constitution that had been passed by Congress only that morning. What would have been the first Thirteenth Amendment declared that Congress had no authority to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed. Lincoln expressed his support for the so-called Corwin amendment by observing that he had “no objection to its being made express and irrevocable” (pp. 235–36). Long ignored by historians, the “other Thirteenth Amendment” has finally been treated to a detailed analysis by historian Daniel Crofts. In Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery, Crofts sets out to achieve two goals. The first is to present the political choreography behind the amendment; the second is to explore the contrast between the popular (and, sometimes, academic) perception of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator and Lincoln’s willingness on the first day of his administration to accept the institution of slavery as a permanent [End Page 291] part of the Union in fifteen states. What has been termed the Corwin amendment (named for Ohio representative Thomas Corwin) becomes, in Crofts’s telling of the tale, the Seward amendment. In this well-researched and well-crafted narrative, Crofts argues persuasively that the proposal to declare slavery off-limits to congressional intervention was designed by Senator, and soon to be Secretary of State, William Seward. For his part, Seward’s amendment was in keeping with the Founding Fathers who had desired the eventual abolition of slavery but acted only to prevent its expansion. Crofts further explains that Seward’s proposition aligned with the 1860 Republican platform, which disclaimed any interest in or authority to interfere with slavery in the states. Seward’s intent was to offer a solution to the problem of secession at little or no cost to Republican ideology. Crofts systematically builds the argument that the moderate wing of the Republican Party (which encompassed a majority, but not the entirety, of the party), led by Seward, wanted, needed even, to counteract the southern mantra that their party was filled with abolitionists. Since the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, many southern political leaders attempted to paint the new northern alliance as favoring slave insurrections and immediate abolition. Although Seward and Lincoln and their followers looked forward to the day the country would be rid of the institution of slavery, only a handful of Republicans could be termed abolitionists. For Seward, therefore, promoting his amendment constituted prima facie evidence that the incoming administration was willing to tolerate slavery where it already existed and that Lincoln’s administration posed no threat to slavery where it was protected by state authority. Crofts also takes a long look at Lincoln historiography, especially historians who, in his words, “depict Republicans as virtual abolitionists” (p. 12). To that end, Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery methodically and convincingly makes the point that Republicans consistently, with few exceptions, argued that they opposed the extension of slavery but had absolutely no designs on slavery in the states. In this regard, Crofts puts James Oaks’s Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery [End Page 292] in the United States, 1861–1865 (2013) in his cross-hairs and, to this reviewer, presents the stronger argument. The Abolitionist Lincoln, Crofts persuasively insists, only gradually emerged with the onset and continuance of the war. Daniel Crofts presents in Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery the first full-scale modern analysis of the Seward/Corwin amendment. By exploring the origins of this all-important episode in the run up to the war, Crofts sheds important light on the fundamental political issue that divided the nation. One might wish he had explored the motivations...

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Changing Discourse on Palestine

This essay examines the discourse on Palestine/Israel in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, charting the impact of the Palestine rights movement on the domestic U.S. policy debate. Policy analyst, author, and long-time activist Phyllis Bennis notes the sea change within the Democratic Party evident in the unprecedented debate on the issue outside traditionally liberal Zionist boundaries. The final Democratic platform was as pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian as any in history, but the process of getting there was revolutionary in no small part, Bennis argues, due to the grassroots campaign of veteran U.S. senator Bernie Sanders. Bennis also discusses the Republican platform on Israel/Palestine, outlining the positions of the final three Republican contenders. Although she is clear about the current weakness of the broad antiwar movement in the United States, Bennis celebrates its Palestinian rights component and its focus on education and BDS to challenge the general public's “ignorance” on Israel/Palestine.

When Fringe Goes Mainstream Again: A Comparative Textual Analysis of the Tea Party Movement's Contract from America and the Republican Party Platform

Successful social movements gain an inside voice and reshape the larger system from within. Knowing the extent to which the Tea Party movement has gained a voice within the Republican Party is vital to understanding the current state of party politics in America. This study analyzes the presence of the goals contained within the Tea Party movement's Contract from America in the Republican platform, finding that each plank of the contract was represented in the 2012 Republican national platform. Increased emphasis on the constitution and fiscal responsibility did not come at the expense of the inclusion of social conservatism or religion. Placing fiscal conservatism within a context of morality and responsibility to God, the 2012 platform reveals a move toward the fusionism popularized by Reagan. The incorporation of Contract from America goals indicates assimilation of Tea Party ideology within the GOP, potentially precipitating the movement's decline. By adopting Tea Party movement compatible ideology, the Republican Party shifted further right, possibly alienating moderate voters in the 2012 election.

Taking Back the Bible

Taking Back the Bible

When Fringe Goes Mainstream: A Sociohistorical Content Analysis of the Christian Coalition's Contract With The American Family and the Republican Party Platform

Successful social movements gain an inside voice and reshape the larger system from within. Knowing the extent to which the Christian Right has gained a voice within the Republican Party is vital to understanding the current state of party politics and civil religion in America. This study considers sociohistorical developments in the Christian Right and analyzes the placement of the goals contained within the Christian Coalition's Contract with the American Family in Republican platforms. The goals, which sought the legislation of morality, were in alignment with and an outworking of the larger social and ideological context of the Christian Right and its legitimating myth. Each of the goals of the CAF was placed within the 2000 Republican platform to varying degrees, from increased emphasis on what was already present to shifted focus or new inclusion of previously absent propositions. The incorporation of Coalition goals indicated assimilation of Christian Right ideology within the GOP, precipitated the Coalition's demise as a dissenting social movement organization, and widened the religion gap in American politics. The election of George W. Bush and dominionist interpretation of following events illustrate an increased Christian Right influence from within the Republican Party, which shifted further right in conjunction with the Christian Coalition's decline.

The 2012 Republican and Democratic Health Care Platforms

Here's what you need to know as the fall elections approach.

A Philadelphia Perspective: The Civil War Diary of Sidney George Fisher (review)

Reviewed by: A Philadelphia Perspective: The Civil War Diary of Sidney George Fisher Matt Mason A Philadelphia Perspective: The Civil War Diary of Sidney George Fisher. Edited by Jonathan W. White. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii, 294. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $28.00.) In 1967, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania published Nicholas B. Wainwright's very selective—but over six-hundred-page—edition of Sidney George Fisher's 1834–71 diary. In this new edition, Jonathan White offers us the Civil War years (1860–65), a selection that will prove useful especially to teachers. White has written a new introduction for this edition and amplified some of Wainwright's explanatory footnotes but otherwise preserved the text as Wainwright presented it. Accordingly, this edition's main contribution will likely be to the classroom. That contribution is of real value, as Fisher's journal provides an excellent resource for teachers interested in the Civil War home front. Fisher was an elite—and elitist—Philadelphian who consistently followed a moderate path in politics. Never a staunch antislavery man or dough-faced sympathizer with the South, both before and during the war he offered relatively disinterested observations on the sectional crisis and the political parties [End Page 511] caught in its vortex. (One exception to this rule is his consistent hatred of the Democratic Party in its various incarnations; from Thomas Jefferson to the Copperheads, he execrated Democrats as venal demagogues with no moral compass.) If this diary does not give us the picture of a doughface embracing the Republican Party evident in the antebellum diary entries of George Templeton Strong or Benjamin Brown French, Fisher does provide a host of neutral observations on public affairs in wartime Philadelphia. Those observations include a vivid picture of a polarized political world. Perhaps the leading theme in the diary is the extreme bitterness of Copperheads in his family and social circle. After every encounter with them, he recorded their rants against the Republican regime, painful as their passionate and extreme positions were to his moderate sensibilities. Of one relative, he wrote in 1863, "He is more violent than ever about the war and I really fear that his mental & bodily health will be seriously affected!" (179). On the other hand, he chronicled a series of mob actions against the most provocative antiwar Democrats, from 1861 to 1865 (84, 109–10, 189, 253–59). Fisher's observations here as elsewhere carry weight largely because he had no particular ax to grind in recording them. Another vital Civil War theme of Fisher's journal is how nonabolitionist northerners came to embrace first the Republican Party and then its emancipationist wartime agenda. Aside from his loathing of Democrats, Fisher was no natural-born Republican. But he noted approvingly in 1860, "the northern people are roused at length" behind the Republican platform, a development he ascribed to white southerners' "excesses and monstrous abuse of power" (20). Indeed, Fisher believed in and feared a slave power conspiracy, although he never used that phrase in the diary (64). After the firing on Fort Sumter and the mobbing of northern troops in Baltimore, even this inert gentleman caught a little war fever (86). Fisher also received much more complete information about southern slavery during the war, which turned him against it (158–59, 197, 202). Crucially, despite his knee-jerk opposition to the idea of black equality, he came to see the military value of black troops (198, 200, 245–46). He knew he was far from alone in this political journey: "The war has changed our notions in regard to slavery," he wrote in 1863, and "if we are not now abolitionists, . . . we are emancipationists & wish to see slavery destroyed since it has attempted to destroy the nation" (206). Moreover, his postwar reflections on the prospect of black equality bespeak the severe limits of most northerners' commitment to the most radical ideas for Reconstruction. [End Page 512] Nor are these the only significant themes Fisher's diary illustrates. For he recorded his thoughts on such perennial themes as early expectations of a short war giving way to determined fighting over the long haul, the character and leadership of Abraham...

From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism. By Joseph E. Lowndes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 224p. $35.00.

Amid swirling talk of a “postracial” politics in the wake of Barack Obama's election as the forty-fourth president of the United States, Joseph Lowndes offers a needed reminder of the central role played by race in American political culture. Nowhere is the discourse of race more apparent, according to Lowndes, than in the supposedly “color-blind” politics of modern U.S. conservatism. Using language that fashioned New Deal liberalism as a “racial synecdoche” (p. 158) for all that conservatives reviled in the four decades following World War II, conservative strategists forged a triumphant pro-business Republican platform that could simultaneously claim to be postracial while serving as the key vote getter of closet racists throughout the nation.

Picking a President: Candidate Over Content; Personality Over Platform

In the week leading up to the 2008 presidential election, brief excerpts from the Democratic and Republican Party platforms on “Higher Education” were presented to undergraduate students (N=244) at a major HBCU (Historically Black College/University) along with a web address which included the presidential candidate’s name. However, unknown to the respondents, the web addresses had been swapped so that the “McCain” web address headlined the Democratic platform statement, and the “Obama” web address headlined the Republican platform statement.The students, 80% of whom identified themselves as affiliated with the Democratic Party, claimed to agree most with the so-called “Obama” platform statement by a margin of 3 to 2. In other words, 63% of the Democrats claimed to agree most with the Republican platform statement! The percentage differences were greater than the margin of error.The most plausible reason for this is that they saw the “Obama” name in the web address that headlined the platform statement and simply supported the “Obama” statement regardless of its substance. In other words, students chose the candidate over the content; they chose personality over platform.

LTC Has Been Focus of Policies but Not Politics

LTC Has Been Focus of Policies but Not Politics

The Fatigues of His Table: The Politics of Presidential Dining During the Jefferson Administration

Thomas Jefferson gave dinner parties: pleasant, personable affairs with good food and imported wines. He gave them as master of Monticello, as a Virginian representative to the Second Continental Congress, as minister to France, as secretary of state, and, most decidedly, he gave them as president of the United States. Breaking away mid-afternoon from his writing desk, often clothed in the careless manner of Virginian aristocracy, Jefferson welcomed to the executive mansion an array of politicians, foreign ministers, and local gentry, guiding a dozen or more to the table, up to five times a week, during seven of the eight congressional seasons of his administration. Jefferson's presidential dinner records, now on deposit in Boston'sMassachusetts Historical Society, begin with the opening day of the Second Session of the Eighth Congress and end two days after the inauguration of his successor, James Madison. On the first page, an anonymous annotation reads "Supposed list of persons Entertained during T.J.'s 2d term," but the collection actually runs from November 5, 1804, through March 6, 1809, covering the last five years of Jefferson's eight-year administration. Although period diaries and memoirs clearly indicate that [End Page 449] the president began his round of dinners at the start of his first term, any dinner lists kept prior to November 5, 1804, have not been located.1 Jefferson's presidential dinner records have not received much scrutiny. The list would seem to contain little mystery, nothing more than a running inventory of guests who dined at the presidential table. No philosophy here, no radical thoughts on education or the institution of slavery; merely a tabulation of congressmen already known and of visitors who are often of but passing interest. Noble Cunningham briefly referenced the lists to demonstrate Jefferson's break with John Randolph. James Bear and Lucia Stanton footnoted the records in connection with Jefferson's presidential expenses. Catherine Allgor, in Parlor Politics, acknowledged the lists in her conversation on Jefferson's apparent phobias.2 Yet the dinners deserve closer inspection. As Bear and Stanton demonstrated in Jefferson's Memorandum Books, the president revealed, within seemingly commonplace record keeping, his habits, his personality, and his political and private lifestyle. In a similar way, Jefferson's presidential dinner records give us more than a "Supposed list of persons Entertained." Over a five-year period, every dinner at the executive mansion appears to have been catalogued—dinners with a single associate, [End Page 450] dinners with a few friends or the cabinet, dinners for locals, dinners for visitors to the city, and dinner after dinner for Congress. Correctly deciphered, this extensive list of names and dates provides not only an intimate picture of those seated at the president's table but also insights on the political culture of early Washington and an opportunity to test some recent historical investigations. Moreover, the records reveal a man who firmly believed his dinners to be the proper republican platform for exerting influence and promoting political harmony during a period in American history when such presidential power was less than assured. It is the intent of this article to analyze the methodology behind the records so they can be interpreted accurately. This, in turn, will offer an opportunity to discuss Thomas Jefferson's unique form of social lobbying and its place in Washington politics.3 * * * Photocopied and pieced together, the microfilmed guest lists produce seven large sheets. When these sheets are laid out, columns of names appear, broken up every fourteen names or so by abbreviated dates in chronological order. Other names run down large undated columns, these interspersed with a variety of letters, numbers, check marks, and slashes. The handwriting is legible. Not surprisingly, the material becomes more organized and systematic in appearance as it moves through the years, peaking during the 1807–1808 congressional session, and then deteriorates in...

Think Tanks and Family Values

The focus on family values in political discussion is relatively new. Although William Safire has produced multiple editions of his Dictionary of American Politics, the term does not appear until the 1995 edition, when Safire includes a quote from the 1976 Republican platform: "Divorce rates, threatened neighborhoods and schools and public scandal all create a hostile atmosphere that erodes family structures and family values.

Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam

RICHARD NIXON was elected in 1968 on assumption that he had a plan to end Vietnam War. He didn't have any such plan, and my job as his first secretary of defense was to remedy that-quickly. The only stated plan was wording I had suggested for 1968 Republican platform, saying it was time to de-Americanize war. Today, nearly 37 years after Nixon took office as president and I left Congress to join his cabinet, getting out of a war is still dicier than getting into one, as President George W. Bush can attest. There were two things in my office that first day that gave my mission clarity. The first was a multivolume set of binders in my closet safe that contained a top-secret history of creeping U.S. entry into war that had occurred on watch of my predecessor, Robert McNamara. The report didn't remain a secret for long: it was soon leaked to The New York Times, which nicknamed it the Pentagon Papers. I always referred to study as the McNamara Papers, to give credit where credit belonged. I didn't read full report when I moved into office. I had already spent seven years on Defense Subcommittee of House Appropriations Committee listening to McNamara justify escalation of war. How we got into