What is a republican?

I thought I'd google this up for the sake of it. After reading about Sarah Palin on wiki I just thought bout how McCain could vote in someone who's a pro-christian into the senate and her the vice president to run along with him. Seriously, who is she? what has she done for the country that gives her a chance to rule USA should mccain just looses the battle with the death spirit? OH wells, I don't live in the USA so perhaps I'd just sit back and shut my big mouth, but who does that nowadays?

So waht are republicans?

(Noun) Member of the United States' Republican Party, first emerging in the mid 1800s as an anti-slavery movement. Success of candidate Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential election of 1860 sparked the American Civil War. The party has since moved on to other issues. Republicans today are characterized by typically right-wing, conservative beliefs including but by no means limited to pro-business policies, lack of dependence on the government in daily life, religious convictions, and desire to outlaw what they deem socially undesirable actions.

However in Urban Dictionary I thought some of the wonderful people in world has provided very hilarious meanings to republicans.

An individual who believes that the white male Christian God should be the only object of worship on the planet, that power and wealth should remain in the hands of 1% of the world's population while the remaining 99% starve, that health care should be privatized so the poor can't afford basic medication, that a rape victim living on welfare should be forced to care for a baby she didn't even ask for, and that America is the only real country on Earth while all those other countries they read about are just fakes invented by communists...oh wait, it's terrorists now, isn't it?
We can all hope that the standard of education in America improves to the point where a Republican can no longer be voted into office.