Talk:Liberal Republican Party (United States)

Untitled
loss of liberals in the GOP?

Yes, this might explain why from here on out Republicans became more conservative.

GOP was already conservative. It started as a coalition

Many civil war leaders?
Like who? They ran AGAINST Grant. If anything the civil war leaders were in the regular GOP like Grant himself

Local Liberal Republican candidates in 1872
Just for clarity's sake: the Liberal Republican Party did have local candidates. I agree that there were not very many LR candidates on the ballot, to be sure.

In 1870, Liberal Republican candidates appeared on the ballot as a third option against the Republican and Democratic nominees in Missouri and New York state (see Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections 1788-1997, pp. 218-219).

In 1872, it appears that the local Democrats and Liberal Republicans worked out arrangements where they would share the responsibility of offering the anti-Republican candidates. There were a few exceptions in which the D and LR parties ran opposing candidates. Here are some examples:

--Arkansas: the At Large candidate for US House was William J. Hynes (LR), but all district candidates were (D).

--Louisiana: In the 3d Congressional District, the three candidates were Chester B. Darrall (R), J.B. Price (D and Reform), and Elbert Gantt (LR).

--Ohio: nine of the twenty non-Republican candidates for the U.S. House were Liberal Republicans running with the Democratic endorsement.

--Texas: in CD-01, the three candidates for US House were William S. Herndon (D), Robert K. Smith (R), and William Chambers (LR).

Admittedly, all of this information comes from Michael Dubin. I have found a number of errors with his information, which I have documented at www.ourcampaigns.com. However, his information is about 99+% accurate. Chronicler3 19:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Also I posted an overview of the Liberal Republican Party at OC two months ago, which gives more detail on party activities: http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=58521 Chronicler3 13:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I am struck by this article's omission of John Sproat's The Best Men and Michael Perman's The Road to Redemption. Both of these titles reference Liberal Republicanism and its consequences at great length. Perhaps some discussion of the nineteenth-century concept of liberalism is also in order here. Rather than the modern liberal belief in an activist and redistributionist state, the classical liberals of the earlier period favored fiscal retrenchment, a dimunition of government services that they equated with spoilsmen, and free trade policies. Without clearly explicating these differences, some contemporary readers might come away confused at what is meant by "Liberal Republican." 72.165.161.139 21:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)SPN

Grant won in a landslide...
Grant decisively defeated Horace Greely in the general election. However, I read somewhere that Grant's opponent Horace Greely died after the general election, and that all of his electors ended up casting their votes for Grant, which is why Grant received all 286 electoral votes. This is why his landslide victory appears misleading. I would edit it, but I don't have a good, credible citation. If someeone could find a link that would be appreciated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gwjones2 (talk • contribs) 04:27, 19 March 2007 (UTC).
 * yes Greeley died right after the election but his electors did NOT vote for Grant (they voted for various other people). Rjensen 04:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Request for re-write
This article omits many significant points:

1) Liberal-Republican party was formed initially by many of the most ideologically committed anti-racism campaigners in the Republican Party, e.g. Sumner, Schurz etc., men who had history going back to e.g. the Free-Soil party.

2) The other planks in its platform, e.g. civil service reform and free trade, broadened its appeal but also attracted members without any commitment to the ideals of the first group above.

3) Charles Francis Adams, preferred candidate of the original group mentioned in (1) lead the voting throughout most of the balloting at the party's convention. Apparently a deal was struck between Greeley and Gratz-Brown that eventually saw Greeley win the nomination. (See, e.g. 'The Doom of Reconstruction' by Andrew L. Slap, Fordham Univ Press, 2006, ISBN 082322709X, 9780823227099). C F Adams would probably not have gained the endorsement of the Democratic party had he won the nomination, on the other hand the Liberal Republican party would have survived as a cohesive entity with a clear platform under a leader true to the aims of its core supporters.

4) This prompted the Democratic endorsement, but also alienated the party's original core. As a result, the unstable coalition fractured immediately after the election and Greeley's death.

IMO the article nonetheless underestimates the party's achievement in cracking the two-party system, however briefly. The formation of the party, the founders' hopes of taking over the Republican party proper, the nomination process and the ideological schism between the C F Adams/Schurz/Sumner (etc.) wing and the Greeley/Blair (etc.) wing needs to be expanded upon.

I would undertake these tasks myself had I more than 10 days of expertise on these matters. Dduff442 (talk) 04:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

"US Grant and his radical republican supporters"?
This statement is POV. Where are the citations? The GOP back then had a strong conservative element. The radicals were just a portion of the party that was kicked out by then (or had moderated). The elections of 1868 and 1870 had done this. Whoever wrote this article needs to fix it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.17.200 (talk) 00:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)