Republican Party

The Republican Party was an American political party in the Old United States. With varying economic views ranging from classical liberalism to corporatist progressivism, and liberal social views (although not to the degree of the WCP), it emerged in the 1850s and quickly became the dominant party of the Second Republic, until the 1932 presidential election and the MacArthur Putsch.The Republican Party formed in 1854 in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska act and the continued expansion of slavery within the First Republic, mobilizing free African-Americans and Northern farmers, proleterians and bourgeoisie alike, and quickly gaining support from the Northern wing of the collapsed Whigs and former members of the Free Soil Party, allowing it to quickly gain majorities in the Northern state governments, and allowing it to win the 1860 presidential election with Abraham Lincoln. With it's firm Loyalist stance in the Slavers' War against the Second Confederation and it's role in the abolition of slavery and Reconstruction, the Republican Party dominated the national political scene of the Second Republic, serving as the party of the urban bourgeoisie.

In the early 1900s, the Republican Party had three informal factions: the conservative pro-business right, the centrist Legalist Progressives and the marginalized, center-left Populist Progressives, who aligned with the Social Democratic Party during it's brief existance, with the former two holding a tight grip over the Party. It would elect most of the Presidents of the Second Republic and clash with their primary rival in the Democratic Party for control over the legislative branch. The controversial Presidency of Charles Fairbanks would see dissident Republicans and Democrats clash with what was perceived to be an overreaching executive, resulting in the passage of the 18th Amendment and the beginnings of Parliamentary government within the United States. Despite this, the Republicans continued to dominate American politics.

During the Great War, the Republicans took a junior role in the National Unity Government and sought to suppress the growing Socialist Labour Party. The resulting escalation of the class war within the United States and the chaos of the Bienno Rosso disgusted progressive Republican General and Secretary of War Leonard Wood, who resigned his position and sought to take control of the Republican Party to curb the excesses of capitalism and at the same time, the growth of the Workers' Party of America. Leonard would be elected President of the United States in 1920 and ensure the triumph of the progressive Republicans, establishing a coalition with the newly formed Democratic-Farmer-Labour Party, and enacting a wide sweeping progressive agenda that dismantled Jim Crow in the South and briefly slowed the growth of the Workers' Party. Wood would be reelected in 1924 before being assassinated three years into his second term in 1927.

Wood's VP, Herbert Hoover, would steer the ailing Republican Party to a narrow victory in the 1928 elections, moderating between the Business and Progressive Republicans, but drifted to the right without Wood's firm influence, costing the Party it's support from the black bourgeoisie and straining the Alignment with the DFLP. Under Hoover, the US economy would collapse in the Great Depression, which caused the WCP to surge and saw the DFLP defect to coalition with the WCP, with the resulting Popular Front winning the 1932 Presidential Election. The reactionary conspiracy known as the MacArthur Putsch originated within the conservative wing of the party and intimidated Hoover into giving his approval for the coup. Much like the Democrats, the Republican Party would be shattered by the resulting Civil War: Business Republicans supported the Putsch and the National Salvation Front, while progressives would either align with the Provisional Government in Chicago or proclaim neutrality, particularly in the American Southwest. The split was formalized upon the Red victory in the Civil War and the formation of the United Republics: progressives seized control of the Party apparatus and merged with the rump Democratic Party to form the Democratic-Republican Party, while pro-Putsch elements of the Republican Party would join MacArthur in exile. Conservatives who opposed the Putsch but also the results of the Red May Revolution, on the other hand, would fold into the True Democrats.