The Tea Partiers, a small percentage of the Republican Party, is running the show.
The Republican Party was created in 1860 when its first presidential candidate was Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln won that election and from then until 1932, the Republican Party dominated American politics. The Republican Party tended to be a relatively conservative party during this period. The one noteworthy exception was the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt which was quite progressive. He was the first president to advocate national health insurance. (like several of his successors, he failed to obtain that goal.) Historians rate him as “near great”.
In 1932, as a result of the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s highly effective campaigning style, the nation’s political alignment changed dramatically. For the next 20 years, the Democratic Party controlled the presidency and usually the Congress. The electorate shifted from heavily Republican to predominately Democratic. In 1952, the nation’s …