Republican Party 1856 vs. 2025

To the editor: In a recent “Letter from an American” (March 15), Historian Heather Cox Richardson recounted the motivating factors that created the Republican Party. Southern landowners (whose wealth was based on free slave labor) were pushing Congress to pass laws that would permit the spread of slavery in the West to gain leverage over the North. A group of Northern politicians from different parties joined together “to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy.”

In 1856, the Republican Party was founded, and in 1859 Abraham Lincoln defined the party as one of “ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery.”

Bradford County has many good “ordinary Americans” who consider themselves ‘conservative’ and are registered Republicans. They believe in the once-accepted platform of limited government, fiscal responsibility, law and order, support for veterans. Many of them believed that Trump, master salesman and liar, had their backs.

Today’s R party stands for whatever Trump mandates. While he is deflecting attention with his bizarre aspirations (e.g. making Canada the 51 st state), his unelected co-president Musk is attempting to gut our government of anyone who opposes Trump’s goal to rule without interference. His goal? Greed and power. Not helping ‘ordinary Americans’.

Every elected official from our district (including D Fetterman) recently voted to pass the R funding package (dictated by Trump) that will, if implemented, hurt many of our locals, including vets, seniors on fixed incomes, the disabled, and children.

Pundits say that most Americans fall in the political center, whether leaning somewhat left or right. Forget party. Are there enough ‘ordinary Americans’ who can see what is happening, who believe in the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, who will speak out/show up to save our democracy?

Karen Johnson
Towanda

Printed in the Towanda Daily Review on 3/22/2025.

(Posted with the permission of the author.)