In a well-worded essay, answer the following question: Does the current state of the Republican Party address the needs

of the average American today? Assert your claim, and use reasons and evidence to support that claim. Ensure that you

address at least one counterclaim in a 500 word essay. Be sure that you edit your draft to ensure coherence and formal

academic word choice throughout your essay

Republican Party, byname Grand Old Party (GOP), in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Democratic Party. During the 19th century the Republican Party stood against the extension of slavery to the country's new territories and, ultimately, for slavery's complete abolition. During the 20th and 21st centuries the party came to be associated with laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The party acquired the acronym GOP, widely understood as "Grand Old Party," in the 1870s. The party's official logo, the elephant, is derived from a cartoon by Thomas Nast and also dates from the 1870s. The term Republican was adopted in 1792 by supporters of Thomas Jefferson, who favoured a decentralized government with limited powers. Although Jefferson's political philosophy is consistent with the outlook of the modern Republican Party, his faction, which soon became known as the Democratic-Republican Party, ironically evolved by the 1830s into the Democratic Party, the modern Republican Party's chief rival.

The Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when antislavery leaders (including former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties) joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act. At meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July 1854), they recommended forming a new party, which was duly established at the political convention in Jackson.