American Political Parties and Elections by L. Sandy Maisel

Author:L. Sandy Maisel [Maisel, L. Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780197605134
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2022-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

The party in government

President Biden and Senate Minority Leader McConnell stand as obvious examples of politicians associated with their political party. When one refers to well-known politicians, those who follow politics even remotely can conjure up certain images. President Biden stands for a multilateral foreign policy and for expanding the number of people receiving affordable healthcare. Senator McConnell is associated with fiscal conservatism, opposition to campaign finance restrictions, stricter immigration laws, and a smaller government. The images may not be precise, but they are clear nonetheless.

How clear are the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans in office? To a large extent that depends on what level of precision you seek. A generation ago, even the most astute observers would have difficulty defining what it meant to be a Democratic officeholder. Democratic senator Ted Kennedy took an extremely liberal position on most issues. But Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, who ran for president as a Democrat, symbolized southern conservative Democrats, of whom there were many. Washington State was represented in the Senate by Henry M. Jackson, a liberal on domestic policies but a staunch conservative on defense matters. During the Vietnam War, Democrat Lyndon Johnson led the war effort, with many allies in the Congress, including most Republicans; other Democrats led opposition to the war, along with a few Republicans. It was difficult to define where the party in government stood.

In the third decade of the twenty-first century, defining the party in government seems to be somewhat easier, at least at the national level. For each session of Congress, the Congressional Quarterly Service computes a party unity score for each representative and senator. In the most recent congresses, each party’s average unity score has been over 90 percent; the percentage of votes on which a majority of one party opposed a majority of the other has also increased. In Congress, generally one finds the Democrats supporting President Biden and Republicans opposing nearly all of his initiatives. Even when President Biden has sought bipartisan support for programs deemed favorable by most voters, Republicans have opposed him, not wanting him to gain credit for legislative achievements.

Some variation does exist if one looks at the state or regional level. In the Republican Party, as a clear example, party officeholders from New England tend to be moderate on social issues; those from states in the Bible Belt, the religiously conservative area in the heartland of the country, tend to be much more conservative. For much of the twentieth century the Republicans were a more homogeneous party than the Democrats; for a period in the early twenty-first century Republicans were split between economic conservatives and social conservatives. However, Republican officeholders united behind loyalty to President Trump and remained loyal even after his defeat.

This change can be seen around the issue of abortion. In 1992, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Robert P. Casey was not permitted to air his pro-life views at the Democratic National Convention. In 2006, his pro-life son, Robert P. Casey Jr., was sought out by party leaders to be their candidate for the US Senate.

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