<P> The GOP expanded its base throughout the South after 1968 (excepting 1976), largely due to its strength among socially conservative white evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics . As white Democrats in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party once American courts declared the Democratic white primary elections unconstitutional, the region began taking on the two - party apparatus which characterized most of the nation . The Republican Party's transforming leader by 1980 was Reagan, whose conservative policies called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes and a strong anti-Soviet Union foreign policy . </P> <P> Reagan's influence upon the party persists as nearly every GOP speaker still reveres him . As such, social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue: "The Republican party, nationally, moved from right - center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved right again in the 1970s and 1980s". </P> <P> The Republican Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs and Free Soil Democrats opposed to the Kansas--Nebraska Act, submitted to Congress by Stephen Douglas in January 1854 . The Act opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states, thus implicitly repealing the prohibition on slavery in territory north of 36 ° 30 ′ latitude, which had been part of the Missouri Compromise . This change was viewed by Free Soil and abolitionist Northerners as an aggressive, expansionist maneuver by the slave - owning South . </P> <P> The Act was supported by all Southerners, by Northern "Doughface" (pro-Southern) Democrats and by other Northern Democrats persuaded by Douglas' doctrine of "popular sovereignty". In the North, the old Whig Party was almost defunct . The opponents were intensely motivated and began forming a new party . </P>

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