The Republican Company history

Senate passes the 1964 Civil Rights Act when the Republican leader, Everett Dirksen (R-IL), defeats Democrat filibuster.

Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 with what his advisors called a “southern strategy”: building a new electoral coalition based on white anxiety about a changing society.

The S&P 500 had its worst first half of a year since 1970, and it is down nearly 19 percent since January.

Although Nixon was reelected by a landslide in 1972, Republicans made few gains in congressional, state, and local elections and failed to win control of Congress.

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974 and was succeeded in office by Gerald R. Ford, the first appointed vice president to become president.

Ronald Reagan won in 1980 with a sunnier version of the same strategy.

One of the big shifts was, in the period before Bill Clinton was nominated for president, there was this soul-searching in the Democratic Party after the 1984 election.

Congress continued to be controlled by the Democrats, however, and Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992 to another Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton.

In 2004 Bush was narrowly reelected, winning both the popular and electoral vote, and the Republicans kept control of both houses of Congress.

In the 2006 midterm elections, however, the Republicans fared poorly, hindered largely by the growing opposition to the Iraq War, and the Democrats regained control of both the House and the Senate.

In the general election of 2008 the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, was defeated by Democrat Barack Obama, and the Democrats increased their majority in both houses of Congress.

According to my calculations, in 2009, the Fortune 500 alone spent $375 billion on health care for their employees.

In the 2012 general election, the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was unable to unseat Obama.

That he could become not just the Republican nominee in 2016 but that his party is now so firmly in thrall to him will long be seen by historians as a marker of a profound shift in the makeup of the Republican base and its attitude to power and authority.

His overall approval ratings were typically low, and in the 2018 midterms Democrats retook control of the House.