Gop what does it stand for

Please enter email address to continue. Please enter valid email address to continue. Chrome Safari Continue. Be the first to know. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Then during the mid-term elections of , Democrats were claiming President U.

Grant would seek a third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, spoofed the idea by drawing a stubborn Democratic donkey trying to scare a docile, slow moving elephant he said represented the Republicans. The symbols stuck and are used to this day. You can insert your own joke here. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.

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Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Ad Choices. In the s, the Republican Party united former Whigs and Democrats, pro-business economic modernizers, and northern abolitionists under one umbrella. They particularly opposed the Kansas—Nebraska Act, a Democrat-supported effort that would have allowed slavery to expand into new territories. Their second presidential candidate in turned out to be a home run: Abraham Lincoln.

You may have heard of him. Lincoln and his early Republicans expanded federal power in ways that are pretty, well, un -Republican today: new federal taxes to fund the creation of a nationalized bank system, a nationalized railroad, high import tariffs , and the state university system.

The party picked up the Grand Old Party label in the s. However, the initialism GOP that is still used today is credited to newspaperman T.