This page is the companion to the Democrats page. The left was racist in origin but is better today. The right was righteous in origin but lost its way.

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to stop the spread of slavery, and it deserves full credit for that. (Link)

The Republican Party sells small government, fiscal responsibility, family values, and Christian values. Here is how the record measures up.

Color Key

• Red = what Republicans preach vs what they do
• Blue = where Democrats took the higher road

1. Family Values: Family Separation

• They say: The family is the foundation of society.
• They do: The 2018 “zero tolerance” border policy took children from their parents as a deliberate deterrent. The federal task force later counted 3,924 children separated from their parents between 2017 and 2021, many with no system in place to reunite them. (Link)
• Higher road: Democrats opposed the policy, and in February 2021 President Biden created the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families, which reunited more than 600 children with their parents in its first two years. (Link)

2. Christian Values: Refugees

• They say: America is a Christian nation. Scripture says “I was a stranger, and ye took me in” (Matthew 25:35).
• They do: The Trump administration cut the refugee ceiling to 18,000 for FY2020 and 15,000 for FY2021, by far the lowest since the program began in 1980. For FY2026 it set a new record low of 7,500. (Link) (Link)
• Higher road: The Biden administration raised the ceiling to 125,000 for FY2022 and kept it there through FY2024. (Link)

3. Pro-Life: Children After Birth

• They say: Every child’s life is precious.
• They do: Not one Republican in the House or Senate voted for the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which expanded the Child Tax Credit to $3,000 per child ($3,600 under age 6) and made it fully refundable for the poorest families. (Link)
  • The expansion drove child poverty to a record low of 5.2% in 2021. Congress let it expire, and child poverty more than doubled to 12.4% in 2022. (Link) (Link)
  • President George W. Bush vetoed children’s health insurance (CHIP) expansion twice in 2007. (Link)
  • Ten states, all with Republican-controlled legislatures, still refuse the ACA Medicaid expansion for low-income adults, including parents. (Link)
• Higher road: Democrats passed the 2021 Child Tax Credit expansion on their own (Senate 50 to 49, House 220 to 211). In February 2009, a Democratic Congress and President Obama enacted the CHIP expansion Bush had vetoed, covering about 4.1 million more children. (Link)

4. Fiscal Responsibility: Deficits

• They say: Balance the budget. Stop spending money we don’t have.
• They do: Under Reagan the national debt nearly tripled, from about $1 trillion to about $2.9 trillion. (Link)
  • Bush cut taxes, fought two wars, and added the Medicare Part D drug benefit with no funding, all on the credit card. (Link)
  • 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: CBO says it adds about $1.9 trillion to deficits over 2018 to 2028, even after economic growth. (Link)
  • 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act: CBO says it adds about $3.4 trillion to deficits over 2025 to 2034. (Link)
• Higher road: The 1993 deficit reduction act passed without a single Republican vote (House 218 to 216, Senate 51 to 50 on Vice President Gore’s tie-breaker). It set up the budget surpluses of FY1998 to FY2001, the only surpluses since 1969, which paid down $453 billion of publicly held debt. (Link) (Link)
  • In 2010 Democrats wrote pay-as-you-go budgeting into law. House Democrats voted 233 to 15 for it; House Republicans voted 172 to 0 against. (Link)

5. Free Market: Drug Prices

• They say: Let the free market work. Cut government waste.
• They do: The 2003 Medicare Part D law, passed by a Republican Congress 220 to 215 after the House vote was held open for hours, included a “noninterference” clause that barred Medicare, the biggest buyer in the country, from negotiating drug prices. (Link) (Link)
  • In August 2022, 43 Republican senators blocked a $35 monthly insulin cap for people with private insurance. (Link)
• Higher road: The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, passed with zero Republican votes, finally let Medicare negotiate drug prices (first negotiated prices take effect in 2026) and capped insulin at $35 a month for Medicare patients starting in 2023. (Link) (Link)

6. Support the Troops: War and Veterans

• They say: We support the troops.
• They do: Sent troops into Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Survey Group found no stockpiles. Republicans voted for the war 48 to 1 in the Senate and 215 to 6 in the House. (Link) (Link)
  • On July 27, 2022, 25 Republican senators who had voted for the PACT Act for burn-pit veterans in June reversed and blocked it (55 to 42). (Link)
• Higher road: Most House Democrats (126 of 207) and 21 of 50 Senate Democrats voted against the Iraq war authorization. (Link)
  • The PACT Act was sponsored by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), with a Senate version from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). After public outrage it passed 86 to 11 on August 2, 2022, and President Biden signed it August 10. (Link)

7. Anti-Corruption: Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra

• They say: Drain the swamp. Restore honesty in government.
• They do:
  • 1920s Teapot Dome: Harding’s Interior Secretary Albert Fall leased federal oil reserves for bribes; convicted in 1929, the first cabinet member jailed for crimes in office. (Link)
  • 1974 Watergate: Nixon resigns. (Link)
  • 1980s Iran-Contra: secret arms sales to Iran, profits funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras despite a congressional ban. On December 24, 1992, President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others. (Link) (Link)
• Higher road: Democrats exposed all three.
  • Sen. Thomas J. Walsh (D-Mont.) led the investigation that uncovered the Teapot Dome bribes. (Link)
  • Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) chaired the Senate Watergate Committee, and Rep. Peter Rodino (D-N.J.) led the House impeachment inquiry. (Link)
  • Rep. Edward Boland (D-Mass.) wrote the amendments that cut off Contra aid. The 1987 investigation chaired by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) and Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) concluded that “the ultimate responsibility for the events in the Iran-contra affair must rest with the President.” (Link) (Link)

8. Party of Lincoln: Civil Rights

• They say: We are the party of Lincoln.
• They do: In 1964 the GOP nominee, Barry Goldwater, voted against the Civil Rights Act, then carried five Deep South states. (Link)
  • The Southern Strategy: Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips mapped a Republican majority built on white Southern backlash against civil rights (The Emerging Republican Majority, 1969). (Link)
  • In a 1981 interview, GOP strategist Lee Atwater explained how open racial appeals were replaced with coded ones: “forced busing, states’ rights,” and later “cutting taxes.” (Link)
• Higher road: President Lyndon Johnson (D) pushed through and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, knowing it would cost his party the South. Honest note: they passed with Northern Democrats and most Republicans together, over Southern Democratic opposition (see the Democrats page). (Link)

9. Free Speech: Book Bans

• They say: We defend free speech and fight censorship.
• They do: PEN America counted 10,046 book bans in public schools in the 2023 to 2024 school year, nearly triple the year before. Florida and Iowa, both under Republican laws restricting school books, accounted for 8,232 of them. (Link)
• Higher road: On June 12, 2023, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) signed HB2789, making Illinois the first state to ban book bans: libraries that remove books over partisan or personal disapproval lose state grants. (Link)

Religious Hypocrisy on the Right

The party that claims Christian values has a long list of leaders who preached morality and lived otherwise.

• 1988: Jimmy Swaggart, televangelist who condemned other preachers’ sins, is caught with a prostitute and tearfully confesses “I have sinned.” (Link)
• 1989: Jim Bakker, PTL televangelist, convicted on all 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy for bilking followers; sentenced to 45 years (later reduced). (Link)
• 1998: Speaker Newt Gingrich leads the impeachment of Clinton over an affair while having his own. He admitted it in 2007. (Link)
• 2006: Rep. Mark Foley resigns over sexually explicit messages to teenage congressional pages. He chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. (Link)
• 2006: Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and anti-gay-marriage activist, resigns after a male escort exposes their relationship and drug use; he admits “sexual immorality.” (Link)
• 2016: Former Speaker Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican Speaker, sentenced to 15 months in a hush-money case tied to sexually abusing boys he coached as a high school wrestling coach. (Link)
• 2022: Southern Baptist Convention: the independent Guidepost report finds top leaders stonewalled abuse survivors for decades to protect the institution. (Link)
• 2024: Donald Trump pitches the $59.99 “God Bless the USA Bible.” (Link)
• 2024: The “family values” party’s nominee, Donald Trump, is convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to an adult-film actress. (Link)

The Pattern (Opinion)

• Prosperity gospel: Many see private jets and megachurch fortunes as hard to square with “Blessed be ye poor” (Luke 6:20).
• “Family values”: Critics point out how many family-values politicians have their own affairs and divorces while lecturing everyone else.
• Immigration: Many see the harshest rhetoric as at odds with “Love thy neighbour” (Mark 12:31) and “I was a stranger, and ye took me in” (Matthew 25:35). (Link)

Bottom Line

The GOP started on the right side of history. It was born to end slavery, and that should never be forgotten. But a party is not its founding story or its slogans. Small government, fiscal responsibility, family values, and Christian values are fine words, but the record too often says otherwise. Judge a party by its record, not its slogans.