Republican Party

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Disputed Presidential Election of 2000

In the 2000 presidential race, the Republican Party nominated Texas governor George W. Bush, the son of former president George Bush, as the party’s presidential candidate. During the campaign, Bush focused on issues such as military spending, education, and tax cuts. He ran against Al Gore, the Democratic nominee for president. After one of the closest and most disputed elections in U.S. history, Bush won the election. However, the Republicans lost seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republicans maintained a slight majority in the House, but the Senate was split evenly between the Republican and Democratic parties. The even split in the Senate ended in mid-2001 when Republican senator James Jeffords left his party and became an independent. His switch gave the Democrats control of the Senate.

President Bush enjoyed high approval ratings as his term began, and those ratings went up dramatically after the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States that killed about 3,000 people. The September 11 attacks deeply affected the country, and many people rallied behind Bush’s efforts to fight terrorism. At the same time Bush struggled to deal with the faltering U.S. economy, which had started to decline in 2000 and was further impacted by the terrorist attacks.

In the 2002 midterm elections, Bush campaigned for many Republican candidates. His efforts and his popularity helped the party regain control of the U.S. Senate and increase its majority in the House of Representatives.

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Bush Reelection

Bush was reelected in the 2004 presidential contest against Democrat John F. Kerry, and the Republican Party widened its majority in both the House and Senate. Although Bush’s approval ratings fell below 50 percent prior to the election, a high turnout among voters who cited “moral values” as their most important concern apparently was a significant factor in the Republican victories. According to polls conducted for the Associated Press and the major television networks, 22 percent of voters cited “moral values” as the issue that mattered most in deciding how they voted for president, followed by the economy, 20 percent; terrorism, 19 percent; and the Iraq war, 15 percent.

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Many political observers credited Karl Rove, Bush’s chief campaign adviser, with a winning strategy that focused on organizing a high voter turnout among evangelical Christians. Eleven state ballot initiatives organized by the Republican Party in largely undecided states, which called for bans on gay marriages, were believed to have brought millions of conservative and evangelical voters to the polls. However, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that when voters were asked open-ended questions about the most important issue, 27 percent chose the Iraq war; 14 percent, the economy; and moral values tied with terrorism at 9 percent.

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The 2006 Midterm Elections

The Democrats regained control of the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. Democrats also took six state houses from the Republicans, giving them control of 28 governorships, including outright control of both the state house and the state legislature in 15 states. The Republicans lost key Senate races in Montana and Virginia, albeit by slim margins. But perhaps more disconcerting were the defeats of moderate Republicans in Senate races in Ohio and Rhode Island. Democratic gains in the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado and Montana, and other gains in the West threatened to make the Republican Party an increasingly regional party based in the South. Democrats, however, eked out gains even there and according to some polls, made inroads among evangelical Christians.

Most political observers agreed that the Iraq war and corruption scandals badly damaged the Republicans in the midterm elections. Polls showed that the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Bush administration’s handling of the war there had become increasingly unpopular. Corruption scandals involving favors from lobbyists and kickbacks from defense contracts led to prison sentences for several Republican members of Congress. Just weeks before the election, Republican congressman Mark Foley resigned after it was disclosed that he had sent sexually suggestive Internet messages to male congressional pages.