If you are interested in politics, good for you! They are a very important part of the modern world because so much is governed by laws.
This is especially useful when you have some control over the way that a law is created, passed, and implemented. Most democracies allow their citizens to have a voice in most of these steps.
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In the United States, the political process is defined by two different parties. Instead of the multiple -party systems that are used in countries such as France and Mexico, or the single party system in a communist country like China, there are only two.
These two parties go head to head in competition every year for votes, so each one has its brand. They choose the sides on various issues that they want to use, and then build their campaigns on that. One of these parties has chosen the name GOP.
GOP stands for Grand Old Party.
The term Grand Old Party was chosen by the Republicans. It originally was Gallant Old Party, which means grand or brave.
This was to bring to mind of the voters the role of the Republicans in the Civil War (back in the 1860s), as most Republicans fought in the North to prevent the nation from splitting.
The first use of the term referring to the Republican party was in 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War.
A year later, the newspaper Cincinnati Commercial Tribune changed the term to the modern form, Grand Old Party. For unknown reasons, the term was shortened to GOP in 1884 and the abbreviation stuck.
The name refers to the history of the party. When the Republican Party was first started, it was because they were very adamantly anti-slavery.
They wanted to end slavery as quickly as possible, and their first president was Abraham Lincoln. He is widely known as one of the best presidents in United States history, so it makes sense that the party would like to hearken back to that prestigious time.
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Notes of Usage
While many abbreviations are considered too informal for writing, the GOP is not. It is another formal term for the Republican Party, and you can commonly see it in news sources about politics in the United States.
If you need your headline to be shorter, for example, you can swap out the 10 letters in Republican for just three in GOP. In addition, the letters in the acronym are pronounced separately. It is the gee oh pee, not the “gop”.
Sentence Examples
- The GOP announced today that they would be taking an anti- gun control stance for the next election.
- The fundraising for the GOP candidates in the state representative elections has been incredible; the leading candidates have already raised more than 60% of the candidates from previous years, and we have just started the election cycle.
