Term Paper on "Republican Party of Texas"

/>The Texas GOP supports "Principled, innovative Leadership," that is to say, people are needed in the party who understand the heritage of the Lone Star State, and have a clear vision of what the future of Texas should be. Moreover Texas GOP leadership should not waver in the face of criticism, be "steadfast when confronted with adversity," and be committed to building a "better state." Honest "compassion" is important to the Texas GOP, in the sense of helping those less fortunate but Texas government should not try to solve problems by "simply throwing money" at the problem.

The Texas GOP stands for quality education through a system that prepares students for their entrance into the economy no matter their "race, wealth, or geographical location." After all, education is "the bedrock of freedom" as well as being the "gateway to opportunity," according to the Texas GOP. Finally, "Freedom" is a major plank in the Texas GOP's platform, and indeed freedom "is God given," and it was "affirmed by our Founding fathers" and it was articulated well in the Declaration of Independence and is "protected by the Constitution." (Republican Party of Texas (http://www.texasgop.org).

The Republican Party of Texas makes clear that members of all races and social classes should have an equal opportunity to prosper and thrive in Texas, but according to the book Race and Class: Texas Politics, the author, Chandler Davidson, points out that in the past the Texas Republican Party was the "party of the white race." He writes that Republican conventions were "overwhelmingly white Anglo affairs" (Davidson p. 238). He backs this up by pointing to the fact that only one percent of the Texas Republican delegates to the 1984 Republican National Convention were black, and 9% were Hispanic. Davidson compares those statistics with data from the Texas Democratic delegates to the Democratic National Convention during which 24% of the delegates were black and 20% were Latino.

The Texas Republican Primary in 1988 Republican Primary featured only 1% African-American voters within that GOP electorate, and one half of one percent of the delegates to the Republican State Convention in 1988 were black. By the mid-1980s, Davidson writes on page 238 of his book, "The Republican Party's hard-line racial policy...had drawn large numbers of racially conservative Democrats and erstwhile supporters of George Wallace into its ranks."

Meanwhile an article in the Journal of Southern History (Baggett 1974) points out that the Texas Republican party was founded between 1865 to 1867 by "Unionists" (those who supported the antislavery sentiments of the North against the pro-slavery intentions of the South). The Republican Party in Texas between 1865 and 1883 grew out… READ MORE