The Conservative Voice for North Georgia
About the Hall County Republican Party
E-mail: HallGOP@gmail.com Phone: 678-617-3564
Our Guiding Principles:
Conserving the Better and Best in American Life
The Foundations of Our Principles.
For knowledge about the proper ends, limits, and practice of prudent self-government, we rely on: 1) the ideals, aims, and mechanisms of the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. and Georgia Constitutions; these mechanisms include a complex set of checks and balances within government combined with a federal structure. 2) the writings and practices that shaped these documents and Western Civilization itself. 3) the human race’s long practical experience in government, that is, knowledge of what has worked and not worked through the ages—what protects liberty, what leads to tyranny; what spurs prosperity, what produces economic stagnation.
Our Principles.
1. Each individual is created equal before God and the law: We take this self-evident truth as the core of America’s ideals. We believe in the sanctity of life and the dignity of every person. Differences in ambition, aims, background—and the exercise of freedom itself—inevitably lead to myriad differences among us. But we are equal in the essentials of our humanity. We are committed to removing real barriers to equal opportunity in education and elsewhere.
2. Free people turn to self-government to do what they cannot do as individuals but must do in common, providing for: national security, including secure borders; public health and safety; a sound currency; general education; bridges, roads and highways; and other such basics. A focus on the essentials is necessary for limiting the size and reach of government, and for maintaining more effective government: the more far-reaching duties the government takes on, the more far-reaching problems can become.
3. Free enterprise and free markets generate wider prosperity, greater opportunity and greater liberty than socialism, highly intrusive welfare states, or other approaches. The experience of the human race during the 20th century—bought at great cost in human lives and suffering—offered overwhelming evidence for this proposition. Clearly, standards of living are lowest where government policy discourages, punishes, or forbids private investment, and thereby discourages energy and creativity. Hence, tax policy should encourage people and businesses to be industrious, save, innovate, and invest.
4. Taxes should be no higher than what is required to pursue the necessary ends of government. Restricting taxes is necessary for restraining government’s endless appetite for growth, and hence for avoiding excessive taxes and threats to individual freedom and prosperity. This principle demands both restraint in spending and limiting the scope of government to its proper functions. Proper limits are key.
5. The most effective government is that nearest the job at hand as specified in the prudent and proper separation of powers of our founding documents. Each level of government—city, county, state, and national—has its proper role. These roles should be respected. This division of duties is yet another means of checking and limiting government to its proper ends in order to protect our liberties and to allow for more effective government. Our federal structure, a bulwark of our freedom, is also meant to allow the states to experiment with ways of providing the essentials of government to meet their own particular needs and circumstances; this also allows states to develop effective new approaches that might be adopted elsewhere.
6. We cherish our basic rights, beginning with those specified in the Bill of Rights. Government’s natural tendency is to encroach on these rights, so citizens must be vigilant in safeguarding them. Any effort to limit any of them must be greeted with skepticism and informed judgment. Yet judgment, informed by long experience, tells us there can be tension between these liberties and other proper aims and values of self-government. Hence, national security or public safety or health may at times require that narrow pieces of these rights be prudently limited; such limits must be properly monitored and removed as soon as is prudently possible.
7. Culture, values, society, are the bedrock of America’s long success. While self-Government is essential to liberty, order, and prosperity, the muscle and sinews of our strength are in: 1) families, neighborhoods, churches, and other associations, from clubs to charities and civic groups; 2) the attitudes, ambitions, values, and virtues of our people; 3) the healthy traditions of our own American and community history and our larger western heritage. Government policy and society’s values should encourage a culture of responsibility, which inclines individuals and institutions to be accountable for their actions.
8. Our Judeo-Christian traditions are at the core of our heritage, and religious voices are an enriching and necessary part of healthy public debate. From the revolution to slavery to civil rights to issues of war and peace, to questions about manipulating life itself, religious voices have always informed understanding of the great issues of the day. These voices are an effective teacher of morals and ethics, and remind us of our responsibilities to family, friends, other people, our communities, and future generations. Religious voices add to the diversity of voices required for a healthy airing of competing ideas and values. Religious voices are not one voice; they are distinguished by diverse voices. Contrary to widespread and growing misunderstanding, the First Amendment as written is friendly to religion. The Founders saw fit to list religion as the first freedom in the Bill of Rights, ranking it along with other fundamental freedoms—press and assembly. They expected that Christian voices would be heard, that while government would not endorse any denomination or faith neither would it be hostile to religion.
9. Informed and active citizens are the ultimate check on government, the means for holding elected officials accountable for their action or inaction. We stress “informed” because freedom cannot endure in the midst of ignorance. Neither can it survive apathy and complacency that allow the continual erosion of basic rights and protections by a government bent on extending its reach further into our lives; nor can it survive growing expectations that government must solve every problem, provide for its citizens’ every need.
10. The courts should be returned to their proper Constitutional functions and hence their proper relationship with the legislative and executive branches, with the states, and with the people. Activist judges have for too long made policy in areas properly reserved to the Congress and state legislatures. This abuse of power has at times weakened the practice of self-government, thrown checks and balances out of kilter and eroded the credibility of courts’ at state and federal levels.
Behind all the elected officials and the candidates of any political party are thousands of hard-working staff and volunteers who raise money, lick the envelopes, and make the phone calls that every winning campaign must have. The national structure of our party starts with the Republican National Committee. Each state has its own Republican State Committee with a Chairman and staff. The Republican structure goes right down to the neighborhoods, where a Hall County Republican precinct captain every Election Day organizes Republican workers to get out the vote.
The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. During the mid term elections way back in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, depicted a Democratic jackass trying to scare a Republican elephant - and both symbols stuck.
For a long time Republicans have been known as the "G.O.P." And party faithfuls thought it meant the "Grand Old Party." But apparently the original meaning (in 1875) was "gallant old party." And when automobiles were invented it also came to mean, "get out and push."
That's still a pretty good slogan for Republicans who depend every campaign year on the hard work of hundreds of thousands of volunteers to get out and vote and push people to support the causes of the Republican Party.
(Paraphrased from article written for the RNC - The Webmaster)
Images and Content Copyright © 2010, Hall County Republican Party and Rich Lacey, Webmaster. All rights reserved.
In 1856, the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President under the slogan: "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont." Even though they were considered a "third party" because the Democrats and Whigs represented the two-party system at the time, Fremont received 33% of the vote. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to win the White House.
Some major Republican Party highlights:
* Thirteenth Amendment, outlawed slavery.
* Fourteenth, guaranteed equal protection under the law.
* Fifteenth, helped secure voting rights for African-Americans.
* Leading role in securing women the right to vote.
* First woman elected to Congress was a Republican.
* Since 1952 most Presidents were Republican.
* Republicans in office when we won the Cold War.
The Republican Party believes in:
* Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
* Limited government.
* Low taxes and restrained spending.
* Free Markets for liberty and prosperity.
* Executive, legislative and judicial balance.
* National security and public safety as top priorities.
* Rights and responsibilities.
* Religious voices being heard.
* Citizens holding officials accountable.
* Conserving the best in American Life.
