Two-party system
A two-party system is a party system where two major political parties dominate the government. One of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the "majority" or "governing party" while the other is the "minority" or "opposition party". Around the world, the term has different senses. For example, in the United States, Jamaica, and Malta, the sense of "two-party system" describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to one of the only two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from various factors like winner-takes-all election rules. In such systems, while chances for third-party candidates winning election to major national office are remote, it is possible for groups within the larger parties, or in opposition to one or both of them, to exert influence on the two major parties. In contrast, in the United Kingdom and Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term "two-party system" is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties which do win seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would suggest.
History of the United States Republican Party
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP (abbreviation for Grand Old Party), is one of the world's oldest extant political parties. The party values reflect economic conservatism, classical conservatism (modern day American conservatism) and corporate liberty rights. It is the second oldest existing political party in the United States after its primary rival, the Democratic Party. The party emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas–Nebraska Act, an act that dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular sovereignty. The early Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States, but by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state.