History
The first Republican National Convention was held at Lafayette Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 22–February 23, 1856. At this convention, the Republican Party was formally organized on a national basis, and the first Republican National Committee was elected. The first Republican National Convention to nominate a presidential candidate convened from June 17–-June 19, 1856 at the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The 1860 convention nominated the first successful GOP presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. The 1864 event, with the American Civil War raging, was branded as the "National Union Convention" as it included Democrats who remained loyal to the Union and nominated Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee for Vice President.
The 1912 Republican convention saw the business-oriented faction supporting William Howard Taft turn back a challenge from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who boasted broader popular support and even won a primary in Taft's home state of Ohio. Roosevelt would run on the Progressive Party ticket, handing the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
The 1940 convention was the first national convention of any party broadcast on live television. It was carried by an early version of the NBC Television Network, and consisted of flagship W2XBS (now WNBC) in New York City, W3XE (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia and W2XB (now WRGB) in Schenectady/Albany.
The growing importance of primaries became evident at the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, California, where Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater won the nomination, easily turning away Governor William Scranton and others more favorable to the party establishment.
At the 1972 convention, First Lady Pat Nixon became the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt and the first Republican First Lady to deliver an address to the convention delegates. It is now common practice for the presidential candidate's spouse to deliver an address to the delegates.
Similarly, former California Governor Ronald Reagan nearly toppled incumbent President Gerald Ford at the 1976 convention in Kansas City by securing a large bloc of votes in the North Carolina primary. It is the last convention of either major party where the outcome of the nomination battle was in doubt.
Pat Buchanan delivered a speech enthusiastically endorsing the conservative side of the culture war in American society at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, Texas. It was widely criticized for supposedly alienating liberal and centrist voters who might otherwise have voted for the moderate nominee, George H. W. Bush. Division in the party was evident too at the 1996 convention, at which more moderate party members such as California governor Pete Wilson and Massachusetts Governor William Weld unsuccessfully sought to remove the Human Life Amendment plank from the party platform.
Read more about this topic: Republican National Convention
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“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)