The present paper seeks an understanding of the ideology of the Republican Party of the United States of America with respect to the State, through its ideas and position regarding the way the State is financed: the taxation of United States citizens. For this purpose, we have looked at the history of the Republican Party and made a case study of the tax cuts implemented by President George Bush during his first mandate (2001-2004), asking what they were, who they benefitted and what kind of impact they had on the financing of United States state machinery. We analyze the ideological reasons for these cuts and how they reflect the current Republican position on the State, contextualizing and contrasting this position with those that were adopted and defended by the Party at the time of its founding and over the course of its history. We discover than the history of the Republican Party can be divided into two ideological phases: the first one, which runs from its founding in 1854 through the mid 1920s in which the State is seen as inducing economic development and maintaining national unity and the second, which brings us up to the present, in which the State gradually cedes its role in inciting the economy to one in which individual freedom should prevail and in which the State is increasingly seen as an obstacle which should be eliminated.
Republican Party; Taxes; State; Ideology