Jaelene Crisostomo
October 14, 2014
Dr. Rowena Vega-Castro
EN111
The Difference between Republicans and Democrats
Every American citizen has the right to vote. In the United States, you get to choose the next president and its congressional party. On Guam, you vote for the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and the senators. Most young adults do not really know the difference of political parties or care to know the difference between who is who. Many people still do not really truly understand the difference of being a republican or democrat. It is much more than the difference between the Democrat donkey logo and the Republican elephant logo. The biggest distinction of the two parties is that Republicans are known as conservatives and the Democrats are known as the liberals (Democrat vs. Republican). All though they have some views and policies Democrats and Republicans both agree on, there are many differences that distinguish the two political parties such as taxes, government spending, social programs and issues.
Anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers founded the Republican Party in 1854 (Diamond & Gunther, 5). It rose to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals towards the end of the 19th century (Diamond & Gunther, 5). Today, the Republican Party supports a pro-business platform, with further foundations in economic libertarianism and a brand of social conservatism increasingly based on the viewpoints of the Religious Right ("Our Party").
Since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, the Democratic Party has consistently positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic as well as social matters (Han & Han, 32). The economically left-leaning activist philosophy of Franklin D.