What is the Republican Party Symbol?

Republican Party

The Republican Party is the present-day rival political party to the Democratic Party in the United States. The name of the party originated from republicanism, which was the principal value during the times of American Revolution. The founders of this party were the economic modernizers, ex-Free Soilers, anti-slavery activists, and ex-Whigs who formed it in 1854. Notably, the Republican Party has won more than half of the last presidential elections, the first Republican president being Abraham Lincoln on the sixteenth election and Donald Trump being the most recent and the current US president.

Ideology

The current ideology of the party is the conservation of America, a different ideology to that of Democratic Party which is modern liberalism. The platform of the Republican Party is the support for fiscal conservatism, free-market entrepreneurship, labor union limitations, free enterprise, deregulation, and strong countrywide protection. The party seeks to uphold traditional values, mainly based on Judeo-Christian ethics, making it socially conservative.

Names

The common name for the Republican Party is Grand Old Party (GOP). In the mid-1850s, the founding party members decided on the name "Republican Party" as a tribute to the political belief values that Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party upheld. Horace Greeley, who was the leading publicist of the party, came up with the idea of the name "Republican Party" through an editorial that simply described those who had restored union and liberty as "Republican." The evolution of the Republican Party has no alignment to the various meanings of the word "Republican" around the world.

The origin of the term "Grand Old Party" (GOP) was the Congressional Record that, in 1875, used "this gallant old party" as the description of the party linked to the strong military security. Modification of the term was made in 1876 when it changed to "grand old party" and in 1884 it gained the first use of the abbreviation.

Symbols

An elephant is the traditional symbol of GOP, and its first important use is considered to be a political cartoon that Thomas Nast published on November 7, 1874, in Harper's Weekly. The party's alternative symbols include a bald eagle in states such as Ohio, New York, and Indiana, and a log cabin in Kentucky. It is important to note that the log cabin as a symbol for the Republican Party has no connection with the gay Log Cabin Republicans organization.

The color identity of the party was not initially consistent until after the election of 2000 when the Republicans gained identity with the red color. It was an interesting coincidence in which during the night of the election, all the major broadcasters used the same scheme of coloring of the electoral map. They used the color red to color the states where Georg W. Bush (the Republican nominee) won, and blue for the states where Al Gore (the Democrat nominee) won. From then on, the media, the party, and the party candidates have embraced red as the Republican Party’s color identity, despite the fact that it is informal and unofficial to assign colors to political parties.