REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES
I'm a Republican Because...
I BELIEVE the strength of our nation lies with the individual and that each person’s dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility must be honored.
I BELIEVE in equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, sex, age or disability.
I BELIEVE free enterprise and encouraging individual initiative have brought this nation opportunity, economic growth and prosperity.
I BELIEVE government must practice fiscal responsibility and allow individuals to keep more of the money they earn.
I BELIEVE the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations, and that the best government is that which governs least.
I BELIEVE the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people.
I BELIEVE Americans must retain the principles that have made us strong while developing new and innovative ideas to meet the challenges of changing times.
I BELIEVE Americans value and should preserve our national strength and pride while working to extend peace, freedom and human rights throughout the world.
FINALLY, I believe the Republican Party is the best vehicle for translating these ideals into positive and successful principles of government.
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Who We Are
The Republican Party includes large numbers of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarians.
The Republican Party is the more socially conservative and economically libertarian of the two major parties. The party generally supports lower taxes and limited government in most economic areas allowing for more economic freedom. In the 1980s, the Republican Party was more strongly conservative than before. In his 1981 inaugural address, Republican President Ronald Reagan summed up his belief in limited government when he said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
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Who We Are
Since 1980, the GOP has contained what George Will calls "unresolved tensions between, two flavors of conservatism -- Western and Southern." The Western brand, wrote Will, "is largely libertarian, holding that pruning big government will allow civil society -- and virtues nourished by it and by the responsibilities of freedom -- to flourish." The Southern variety, however, reflects a religiosity based in evangelical and fundamentalist churches that is less concerned with economics and more with moralistic issues, such as opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.
Separation of powers and balance of powers
The Republican Party believes that making law is the province of the legislature and that judges, especially the Supreme Court, should not "legislate from the bench." Most Republicans point to Roe v. Wade as a case of judicial activism, where the court overturned most laws restricting abortion on the basis of a right to privacy inferred from the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Some Republicans have actively sought to block judges who they see as being activist judges and they have sought the appointment of judges who will practice judicial restraint. Other Republicans, though, argue that it is the right of judges to extend the interpretation of the constitution and judge actions by the legislative or executive branches as legal or unconstitutional on previously unarticulated grounds.
The Republican party has supported various bills within the last decade to strip some or all federal courts of the ability to hear certain types of cases, in an attempt to limit judicial review. These jurisdiction stripping laws have included removing federal review of the recognition of same-sex marriage with the Marriage Protection Act, the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance with the Pledge Protection Act, and the rights of detainees in Guantanamo Bay in the Detainee Treatment Act. The last of these limitations was overruled by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Compared with Democrats, many Republicans believe in a more robust version of federalism with greater limitations placed upon federal power and a larger role reserved for the States. Following this view on federalism, Republicans often take a less expansive reading of congressional power under the commerce clause, such as in the opinion of William Rehnquist in United States v. Lopez. Many Republicans on the more libertarian wing wish for a more dramatic narrowing of commerce clause power by revisiting, among other cases, Wickard v. Filburn, a case which held that growing wheat on a farm for consumption on the same farm fell under congressional power to "regulate commerce ... among the several States...".
President George W. Bush is a proponent of the unitary executive theory and has cited it within his signing statements about legislation passed by Congress. The administration's interpretation of the unitary executive theory was called seriously into question by Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that the President does not have sweeping powers to override or ignore laws through his power as commander in chief, stating "the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails.". Following the ruling, the Bush administration has sought Congressional authorization for programs started only on executive mandate, as was the case with the Military Commissions Act, or abandoned illegal programs it had previously asserted executive authority to enact, in the case of the National Security Agency domestic wiretapping program.
Economic policies
Republicans emphasize the role of corporate and personal decision making in fostering economic prosperity. They support the idea of individuals being economically responsible for their own actions and decisions. They favor free-market policies supporting business, economic liberalism, more economic freedom, and limited regulation. A leading economic theory advocated by modern Republicans is supply-side economics. Some fiscal policies influenced by this theory were popularly known as "Reaganomics," a term popularized during the Presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan. This theory holds that reduced income tax rates increase GDP growth and thereby generate the same or more revenue for the government from the smaller tax on the extra growth. This belief is reflected, in part, by the party's long-term advocacy of tax cuts, a major Republican theme since the 1920s. Republicans believe that a series of income tax cuts since 2001 have bolstered the economy. Many Republicans consider the income tax system to be inherently inefficient and oppose graduated tax rates, which they believe are unfairly targeted at those who create jobs and wealth. They believe private spending is usually more efficient than government spending.
Most Republicans agree there should be a "safety net" to assist the less fortunate; however, they tend to believe the private sector is more effective in helping the poor than government is; as a result, Republicans support giving government grants to faith-based and other private charitable organizations to supplant welfare spending. Members of the GOP also believe that limits on eligibility and benefits must be in place to ensure the safety net is not abused. Republicans strongly supported the welfare reform of 1996, which limited eligibility for welfare and successfully led to many former welfare recipients finding jobs.
The party opposes a single-payer universal health care system, such as that found in all other developed countries, referring to it as "socialized medicine" and is in favor of the current personal or employer-based system of insurance, supplemented by Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. The GOP has a mixed record of supporting the historically popular Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs, all of which Republicans initially opposed. On the one hand, congressional Republicans and the Bush administration supported a reduction in Medicaid's growth rate. On the other hand, congressional Republicans expanded Medicare, supporting a new drug plan for seniors starting 2006.
Republicans are generally opposed by labor unions and have supported various legislation on the state and federal levels, including right to work legislation and the Taft-Hartley Act which gives workers the right not to participate in unions, as opposed to a closed shop which prohibits workers from choosing not to join unions in workplaces. Republicans generally oppose increases in the minimum wage, believing that the minimum wage increases unemployment and discourages business.
Environmental policies
Most Republicans believe that strict environmental standards hurt businesses and therefore support reductions in environmental regulations based on the principle of laissez-faire economics. A considerable percentage of Republicans are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming and doubt scientific studies that demonstrate the impact human activity has on climate change, instead asserting that global warming is part of natural cyclical phenomenon.
Historically however the Republican Party has made several notable contributions to the protection of the environment. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was a prominent conservationist whose policies eventually led to the creation of the modern U.S. National Park Service. Also, President Richard Nixon was responsible for establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. More recently, California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the help of 16 other states, plans to sue the Federal Government and the United States Environment Protection Agency as an attempt to gain a waiver that allows the state to set vehicle emission standards higher than the Federal Standard.
President George W. Bush has publicly opposed ratification of the Kyoto Protocols on the grounds that they unfairly targeted Western industralized nations such as the United States while giving developing Third World pollutors such as China and India a pass.
In 2000, the Republican Party adopted as part of its platform support for the development of market-based solutions to environmental problems. According to the platform, "economic prosperity and environmental protection must advance together, environmental regulations should be based on science, the government’s role should be to provide market-based incentives to develop the technologies to meet environmental standards, we should ensure that environmental policy meets the needs of localities, and environmental policy should focus on achieving results processes." Although this platform was created for the Republican National Convention, emphasis on these issues within the Republican Party has diminished in the past few years.
Currently the Bush Administration, along with several of the candidates seeking the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008, supports increased Federal investment into the development of clean alternative fuels such as ethanol as a way of helping the U.S. achieve energy independence. Most Republicans support increased oil drilling in currently protected areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a position which has drawn sharp criticism from many environmental activists.
Social policies
The 2004 Republican platform expressed support for the Federal Marriage Amendment to the United States Constitution to define marriage exclusively between a man and a woman. A majority of the GOP's national and state candidates are pro-life and oppose abortion on religious or moral grounds, and favor faith-based initiatives. There are some exceptions, though, especially in the Northeast and Pacific Coast states. They support welfare benefit reductions and oppose racial quotas, and are generally dubious of the desirability of affirmative action for women and minorities. Most of the GOP's membership favors capital punishment and stricter punishments as a means to prevent crime. Republicans generally strongly support constitutionally protected gun ownership rights.
Most Republicans support school choice through charter schools and education vouchers for private schools; and many have denounced the performance of the public school system and the teachers' unions. The party has insisted on a system of greater accountability for public schools, most prominently in recent years with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
The religious wing of the party tends to support organized prayer in public schools and the inclusion of teaching creationism or intelligent design alongside evolution. Although the GOP has voted for increases in government funding of scientific research, many members actively oppose the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research because it involves the harvesting and destruction of human embryos (which many consider ethically equivalent to abortion), while arguing for applying research money into adult stem cell or amniotic stem cell research. The stem cell issue has garnered two once-rare vetoes on research funding bills from President Bush, who said the research "crossed a moral boundary."
National defense and security
The Republican Party has always advocated a strong national defense; however, up until recently they tended to disapprove of interventionist foreign policy actions. Republicans opposed Woodrow Wilson's intervention in World War I and his subsequent attempt to create the League of Nations. Many Republicans opposed the creation of NATO. Even in the 1990s, although George H.W. Bush orchestrated the Gulf War, Republicans opposed the intervention of the United States in Somalia and the Balkans. However, in 2000, George W. Bush ran on a platform that opposed these types of involvement in foreign conflicts.
Today, the Republican Party supports unilateralism in issues of national security, believing in the ability and right of the United States to act without external or international support in its own self-interest. In general, Republican defense and international thinking is heavily influenced by the theories of neorealism and realism, characterizing the conflicts between nations as great struggles between faceless forces of international structure, as opposed to the result of individual leaders, their ideas, and their actions. The realist school's influence shows in Reagan's Evil Empire stance on the Soviet Union and George W. Bush's Axis of Evil.
Republicans secured gains in the 2002 and 2004 elections with the War on Terror being one of the top issues favoring them. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the party supports policies with regard to the War on Terror, including the 2001 war in Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The doctrine of war to disarm and destroy military foes before they can act, has been advocated by prominent members of the Bush administration, but the war within Iraq has undercut the influence of this doctrine within the Republican Party.
The Bush administration supports the position that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants, using the premise that they apply to soldiers serving in the armies of nation-states and not terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The Supreme Court overruled this position in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that the Geneva Conventions were legally binding and must be followed in regards to all enemy combatants.
Other international policies
Republicans support attempts for the democratization of Middle-Eastern countries currently under the rule of dictatorships. However, as the Republican Party favors an international policy based on realism, President Bush has taken contradictory steps in forging strong alliances with dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan and in opposing democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Palestine and elsewhere as an effort to further the United States' foreign policy goals.
The party, through former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, has advocated reforms in the U.N. to halt corruption such as that which afflicted the Oil-for-Food Program. As previously stated, some Republicans including Bush oppose the Kyoto Protocol (although there is a section which supports it within the party). The party strongly promotes free trade agreements, most notably NAFTA, CAFTA and now an effort to go further south to Brazil, Peru and Colombia.
Republicans are divided on how to confront illegal immigration between a moderate business-friendly platform that allows for migrant workers and easing citizenship guidelines, and a harsher enforcement-first nationalist approach. The Bush administration has made appeals to immigrants a high priority long-term political goal, but that goal is not a high priority in most local GOP entities. In general, pro-growth advocates within the Republican Party support more immigration, and traditional or populist conservatives oppose it. In 2006, the White House supported and Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform that would eventually allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens, but the House, taking an enforcement-first approach, refused to go along.
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