WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (AFP) - The Republican Party hopes to parlay its traditional mix of martial strength and family values into another four years of control over the White House and Congress.
The party that will meet next week in New York to nominate President George W. Bush for re-election is basically the same conservative group that has held sway over US politics for much of the past two decades.
Republicans still tend to be male, white, more affluent, pro-business and church-going. And under Bush, their party has taken on the same flag-waving colors of the right's revered Ronald Reagan, who died in June.
Like the Reaganites, the Republicans under Bush have pushed through major tax cuts and hikes in defense spending, playing down concern over mushrooming national deficits.
Both generations embraced the support of evangelical Christians; both promoted an unabashed brand of patriotism, homespun sentiment and aggressive black-and-white view of the US role in the world.
Analysts have drawn a distinct parallel between the styles, vision and language of the incumbent, a self-styled "war president" after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and his precedessor from 1981 to 1989.
"Ronald Reagan was comfortable calling the Soviet Union the evil empire, just as President Bush was comfortable calling North Korea, Iran and Iraq the axis of evil," said Bush's former press secretary Ari Fleischer.
The Republican Party of today, characterized by critics as a rich man's club with little feeling for the underdog, is a far cry from the political movement established in the 1850s to oppose the spread of slavery.
After fielding their first presidential candidate in 1856, the Republicans sent Abraham Lincoln to the White House four years later, triggering the Civil War but winning a reputation as the party of emancipation.
The party largely dominated presidential politics in the early 20th century until the Great Depression. It emerged from World War II as a staunchly anti-communist movement, sponsoring the tirades of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Although communism eventually lost steam as an issue, a new strain of conservatism began to take hold of the Republicans as their base shifted slowly from the country's more moderate Northeast to the South and West.
The trend blossomed under Reagan, and his formula has been good to the Republicans, who have held the presidency for 16 of the last 24 years.
If 23 percent of voters identified themselves as clear party members in 1980, the figure was up to 30 percent by 2002. Republicans today control both houses of Congress and 28 of the 50 state governorships.
While staunchly anchored on the right, the Republican Party is still preaching a policy of inclusiveness -- translated by Bush as "compassionate conservatism" -- and says it is trying to diversify.
Republican officials boast that minorities will represent 17 percent of the total delegates at their convention in New York. This is up from 10 percent in 2000 yet far short of the 40 percent reported by the Democrats.
But the influence of the Christian right, which first emerged on the national political scene in 1980, appears to be growing within the Republican ranks and opening new fissures in an already polarised electorate.
A Gallup poll published early this month gave Bush a 57-39 percent lead among registered voters who attend church weekly while Kerry had a margin almost as large among those who went rarely or never.
A Time Magazine poll in June found that 79 percent of likely voters who support Bush feel religious values should guide the country's political leaders. Only 40 percent of Kerry backers felt the same way.