Specter says party switch driven partly by desire to keep seat

Yes, this was pretty much the basis for my blog post this week but I thought it was an important point to focus on. This article emphasizes the biggest motive behind Arlen Specters party switch.

RepubliCrat

I think this recent switch in Parties is both an upholding of our party system in the United States and a mockery of it. Is it really possible for a person to flip-flop with no true party loyalty just to keep his/her job? In general I think Fiorina would be irritated and Aldrich would not be surprised.


The whole idea behind the Culture War book was to emphasize the point that just because the elites in office are heavily polarized against each other, this does not mean that it is a clear representation of the voting public as a whole. Fiorina does not suggest party switching as a solution to the problem. He states that he believes most candidates sincerely believe they are at war. Specter is now choosing to fight

that war from a different side of the political fence. He is doing this mainly because he wants to keep his seat in the senate which brings me to Aldrich.
“The elective Office Seekers’ and holders’ interests are to win (Aldrich p. 24). Specter was very concerned about losing his senate seat and was “"unwilling to subject my 29-year record in the U.S. Senate to the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate," (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/29/specter.party.switch/index.html) Specter says that it is his ongoing disagreement with the right-shifting philosophies of the Republican party that play a big role in his decision to change, and that he will put people over party and be bipartisan, but I think that any comment after “don’t want to lose my seat in the senate” becomes far less believable as a main source. And what do the Democrats care? They are now one seat shy of being filibuster proof while they wait on Al Franken.

Answering the question of how something like this could happen in 2009 with such polarized elites is apparently pretty easy. For Arlen Specter it is not about fighting the political war as a loyalist for his team, it’s about being able to fight a war in general, and get paid for it. I cannot even pretend to draw the allusion that Specter is just a reflection of the voter and not really extreme on either side, he requested a transfer to a different team because he knew his own was not going to have him around the next year.

What the Stevens conviction means for the GOP

How this changes Nov. prospects, party reputation and GOP pecking order

Speaking of parties collapsing.... This article discusses the potential hardships facing the republican party. There are a lot of members in the senate retiring and on top of that, a conviction of a current senator hits the party hard as well.

Consider how devastating it must be for John McCain and a whole herd of GOP incumbents to see the words "Senator," "Republican,” “convicted," and "corruption" in the news just eight days before the election.

A New Party

Because we have a two party system and one of the two has collapsed (The Republican Party), we obviously cannot reinvent that same party, but at the same time we cannot create that party’s opposite. If we did this we would “technically” have the Democratic Party, at least in the eyes of most Conservative voters. I think the best party would have to be a combination of both.

First we would have to assess why the Republican Party failed in the first place. I would find it highly unlikely that all aspects of the party failed. It is hard to say which policies would be emphasized without this information, but the new platform would include policies that have had the greatest success in both parties, new policies attempting to correct mistakes of the past, and as suggested in our readings “a set of desirable policies different from the status quo.” Just as in the 1992 election with Ross Perot, playing to weaknesses of both parties and attempting to offer a solution that neither can could provide big results.Just as noted in the Spatial Model, voters are looking for a candidate who will provide them with the most utility, and in order to be competitive in a Nation would election, it is important to portray that, even if it is an illusion.

It would also be important not to come off as too similar to the Democratic Party because this may cause a division in that party and most likely have a lesser chance of getting a Conservative vote. Equally as important, the new party would have to make sure they do not adopt the negative reputation associated with the fallen party.

The leaders would include members with a strong political history but with very few ties to extremist acts of voting leaning to one side or the other. John McCain would have been a good example prior to the 2008 election. Interest groups and voting blocs for issues on both ends of the political scale would be helpful. Research would be needed to assess which groups carried the greatest push in the voting population and then a plea to them would surely boost popularity. With enough backing from interest groups and voting blocs the party should be ready for competition as soon as the Democratic Party screws up.

Analysis: Cheering but mixed bag for Obama

World must wait and see on issues like nuclear arms and economic reform

I thought this article matched our blog topic for this week. We talk about how long it will be for the GOP to get the upper hand again. So for the world and the country is please with our president. However, they are still waiting on the results on some very critical issues. These success or failure of these issues could result in a greater delay of GOP success or the opposite. Then again, a Failure in ares of Nuclear Arms and Economic Reform could result in far more than that. FINGERS CROSSED!

GOP on the Back Burner

I think it has come to a time where the Republican Party is going to take a massive back seat. Forever? Definitely not. I think the public definitely shows a pattern of flipping between favored parties depending on the success of the previous President or seatholder.

I do think the Republican Party will have a significantly difficult time rebounding with out some serious effort. Aldrich talks about Van Buren’s effort to revive the Republican Party and I think some of his strategies would be helpful (Pg. 122). The party needs to get back in touch with its principles. They also need to work on not neglecting those groups and states that already support them. This election the Republican Party lost some states that used to be “red” states (Indiana, Florida, North Carolina) and I believe that has to do with the lack of faith in the party. Page 112 states the party needs to cater to those who could be made to benefit from the revival of the Republican party as well s creating an alliance with those who are already in support.

http://ohiogop.blogs.com/ Shares their view on how to rebuild the party and it parallels the Aldrich reading quite well with some more modern ideas as well:

Returning to our roots of fiscal conservatism
Building beyond our traditional base
Developing bold solutions to pocketbook issues impacting Ohio (economy, jobs, health care, energy)
Re-engaging the middle class
Improving our message delivery
Connecting on campuses
Implementing a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct

They also discuss their need for the definition of clear policies and agenda which has definitely been lacking. (Aldrich pg 109 brings up the same issue)

The bottom line is the Republican Party is not dead, but it will definitely be very sick until it takes the proper action to regain its strength.

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan: Our party has become too fearful of our own ideas. Since 1997, congressional Republicans began a steady retreat from principled leadership to political expediency. A party built on spending discipline and government reform succumbed to the siren songs of government expansion and earmarked giveaways. Republicans squandered the opportunity to limit and reshape the relationship between the federal government and the individual.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Prez!

Another title that pretty much says it all. I thought this article fit perfectly with my blog and the talks over whether or not President Obama has a mandate. A perfect battle between numbers and actions.

Mandate?

Directly after the election, President Obama was well on his way to an electoral mandate but was not there yet. The opposition still had the ability to filibuster because the democrats were down a few seats in the senate. 60 seats are required for a party in order to be filibuster-proof and right the democrats hold 56. The term mandate has often been used loosely and in past elections mandates have been “called” for less.

The answer to the question as of the present, is technically no. Though I think in practice that “no” is not a strong one. As of February 2009, there are 57 democrats holding seats in the senate. This number includes two politicians who had not yet sworn in, Al Franken and Roland Burris. Burris is now an official count, and Franken is still a part of the chaos Minnesota has created. Then there are the two senators, Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, who are officially listed as Independent, but caucus with the Democrats. This gives a shaky total of 59. Still not the 60 seats needed.

All of the technical details aside, do I think President Obama has the authority to do the things he wants to do? Absolutely. While the numbers show a chance for opposition, this assumes that the opposition will indeed oppose everything he wants. This is far from likely. If the political world was calling president Bush’s presidency a mandate at 51, in faith, Barack Obama has one as well.

Change of Constitution?

Congress mulls elections to fill Senate vacancies
Lawmakers debate changing Constitution so voters can pick replacements

I find it interesting every time a serious attempt at changing the constitution is at hand.

This article discusses the idea of changing the constitution to allow voters to choose who will fill the seats in the senate instead of state governors.

"Appointments by governors, said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., "are an unfortunate relic" of the first century of the nation's history when senators were picked by state legislatures. Feingold, a chief sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment requiring elections to fill vacancies, spoke at a joint House-Senate hearing on the proposal. "

Considering the most recent issue with Blagojavich, this could be the answer to a lot of the corruption in the process. They would have to bribe the voter intead

Exit Polls: Wisconsin

Exit polls act as fairly consistent methods of predicting elections and breaking down the different characteristics that may play a role in why the population votes the way they do. I decided to look at the exit poll results for the 2008 general election in Wisconsin. More Specifically I wanted to find how early the voters had their mind set on a candidate and what other relationship might explain this.

The Majority of people know who they are going to vote for long before the election itself. The exit polls on cnn.com (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=WIP00p1) ask when the voters knew when they were going to vote for the candidate they voted for. The bulk of voters said that they knew months before the election. 60% of Wisconsin voters knew which Presidential candidate they would vote for prior to September 2008. This most likely coincides with the results showing that 95% of Democrats voted in alignment with their party Identification and 89% Percent of Republicans voted along side theirs.

It makes sense that if people are voting in alignment with their usual party identification, that their decision of a candidate would be known months prior to the election. 15% of people did not vote in accordance with their party ID and 11% of voters did not know who they were going to vote for until less than a week prior to the election. It might be interesting to draw a comparison of these results. It may have been those struggling with voting opposite their typical party loyalty, that suffered the most indecision before the election.

House GOP Plead with Dems

I thought this link fit well with this weeks blog. House GOPs plead with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer Monday to put a freeze on using the remainder of the fiscal year's unspent budget with an exception of the "non-negotiables," funding cuts for troops and tax increases.

Module 5: Minority Party

In a democracy the role of the Minority Party is to aid in “mobilization congressional majorities and in shaping public policy” (Heatherington and Keefe, 175). In the most recent past presidencies when congress had a less divided majority, it seemed as though the main responsibility of the Minority party job was to take a stand against the majority’s legislation and administrative programs. With new Democrats having such a strong role in congress this presidency, policy advocacy on the Republican front appears to be pointless. So why do the 214 Republicans still show up to work?

While the Democrats hold the majority and can produce legislation without the support of the Republicans, the Republicans are still representatives. They represent the views of a good chunk of the population. Though it is important for compromise and bipartisanship to accomplish goals in congress, it is also the responsibility of the representatives to represent those that put them into office.

In addition to the responsibility to the people, the power of persuasion is still very much important. Congressional Democrats fall on different positions on the ideological spectrum. Many moderate Democrats may side with less conservative Republicans and this alone provides incentive for Republicans to state their views and oppositions. Democrats need to adhere to a system of checks-and-balances and without opposition, this would be very difficult.

Another reason the Republicans may be motivated to show up for work in congress is that if they have a successful opposition to the Democrats, meaning a plan the Democrats with through with fails, they have the ability to finger-point. A failure in any realm is negative for the country, but positive for the opposition party that wants to regain a majority.

GOP governors look ahead to 2012

I realize the "stimulus" discussion is being a bit drawn out. This article takes a prospective view of the GOP for the future and how their support/opposition could effect the candidacy in 2012.

The E-Campaign

In the 2008 Presidential election, both John McCain and Barack Obama appeared to be running very candidate-centered campaigns. The theme for the election, most notably from Obama was “Change,” but was also coined in John McCain’s “A Change We Can Believe In.” This alone required a step away from traditional strict party loyalty. McCain has constantly been ostracized his lack of party loyalty and Obama has been praised for his independence.

I think the candidates are very much influenced by their netroots. Obama ran a very successful netroots campaign.

“The websites are part of a strategy that Obama announced in an online video, in February 2007, even before he formally launched his presidential campaign. He asked his online audience to "use this website as a tool to organize your friends, your neighbors and your networks." (http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/03/obama_tools)

John McCain attempted the same strategy with sites like blogs4mccain.com but was not as successful.

I strongly believe that advancing technology is decreasing the pull of the political party in campaigns. Voters are seeing candidates more as individuals and less as a byproduct of a greater political regime. According to King (The Vulnerable American Politician, 1997), politicians are vulnerable four reasons: their short terms in office, running as individuals rather than as a party, having to continually raise large sums of money, and that they face being defeated in primary elections. The internet just adds to the threat. Incumbents may now show a lack in job security because their platforms and campaign specifics are put on a platter for the voter to see as well as the negative idea that blogs and articles may easily be biased and misleading, providing for a stronger defense on the candidate’s part. The internet also increases the fact that the candidates have to run as individuals and their party backbone is weakening.

“Every statement made by a politician is videotaped, scrutinized and broadcasted to anyone with internet access. Politicians will be accountable for every lie, double-talk and incriminating phrase they utter.” (http://www.helium.com/items/295535-the-internets-effect-on-campaigning-and-elections)

Burris: I tried to raise money for Blagojevich

This article seemed semi-appropriate for this weeks topics. It is about the scandals of raising money in politics and nominations. It appears that both parties are taking a stand against this sort of behavior and even a call to the ethics committee might be at hand.

Boring Title About Finance Reform and Nominations

Depending on who you ask, there can be negative effects of these political reforms and new rules involving the primaries. The blanket primary, for example, is “anathema to anyone who believes parties stand for something and they should be held accountable for the performance of the government” (Hetherington and Keefe pg .72). This system is the most open of primaries and creates split-ticketing, which shows a weakness in the party system because it is candidate-centered and gives responsibility to the individual. The Open Primary also has negative effects. Voters are allowed to vote outside their party and can potentially screw the other party before moving on to the main election. “Party Leaders suffer from a special anxiety in open primary states: the possibility that voters of the competing party will raid their primary, hoping to nominate a week candidate who would be easy to defeat in the general election” (Hetherington and Keefe pg. 70). This means that in the past election a Republican could/would have voted for Hillary Clinton as the choice for the Democratic Nomination because she would be easier to defeat by the Republican candidate. Our reading also tells us that Wisconsin 8 to 11 percent are partisan crossovers in the primaries.

It is next to impossible for a candidate to win office without a Party’s nomination and that nomination means money. There are constant attempts at regulating the means for attaining funds for campaigning. The court however, in Buckley v. Valeo, decided that it was unconstitutional to limit the independent spending of candidates or individuals because Political money is political speech (Hetherington and Keefe pg. 119). The wealthiest people will always win out in the candidate process because there will always be loopholes in political spending, especially when people are willing to spend their own money. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 “would, Democrats hoped, strike at the heart of Republican political power—while leaving untouched their own sources of influence, such as union-organized volunteers. The law tightly limited both political contributions and any expenditure that might “influence” an election.”( http://www.city-journal.org/html/ws2007-07-01bs.html) FECA attempted to limit the cost of elections, lower the influence of wealthy contributors on elections and has failed to an extent on both of those. There is no way to rid the election process of all factions. It seems like a nice idea that any intelligent person have a fair shot at becoming a president, but there has to be an elimination process, and money tends to be the easiest way to do this. The most important goal of these reforms should be to find a way to keep politicians from being heavily influenced by their financial contributors.

Lucky Lieberman

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/18/AR2008111803153.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

Senator Joe Lieberman was facing the risk of being outlawed from the Democratic Party for his support of Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain. Turns out the majority of the fellow democratic senators voted to let him keep his position by a landslide.

Decentralization

I believe Decentralization is an effective and important part of our political system.

According to Hetherington and Keefe page 32, it is much easier for candidates running on a subnational level to assimilate with the state’s ideologies. I think this alludes to the difficulties political parties may have on the national level. Because Decentralization has the power being held higher at state and local levels, it becomes more difficult to have a unified ideology among parties and thus discipline is lacking. I do however think this lack of discipline can be a good thing in terms of our Nation’s heterogeneity.

Decentralization forces candidates and political parties to cater at a more local level, and those smaller levels are made up of different people, ethnicities, ideologies etc, steering clear of an overall generalization. This in turn works in favor of the local representatives. Without this dispersing of power, subnational government leaders would have little weight in decision-making and would hold no value. This would create a lack of efficacy among voters, knowing that one national leader could not possibly take care of their needs, voting a partisanship is pointless.

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/mccain_plans_decentralized_cam.php . This article describes McCain’s plan of Decentralized campaigning. This may have been effective had the content of his campaigning been different.

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/546# . This article is an example of Obama’s use of Decentralization in his political campaign and its effectiveness. He created a hierarchal system of campaigning allowing different smaller teams to take charge of different districts. This sacrifice of centralized control may have played a large role in the election outcome, which clearly was a victory on his end.

I think as of right now the Republican Party is looking for someone to take control. Right now the party is can only focus on local reps. They had a pretty serious defeat and most of the nation is rallying in hope behind the new president, who is in clear control of the Democratic Party. (Yes, this is coming from a conservative-libertarian—myself).If things move forward in a successful manner, I think party strength should be less important. I am sure the Republicans are waiting for Obama to fail so they can rally behind a new leader and take their attempt at a lead; and if he does fail, by all means go for it.

States to Congress: Stop squabbling and send help

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/02/states.economy/index.html?iref=newssearch

This article can be summed up in the comment:

Their message to Congress: Stop the partisan bickering and show us the money.

States are looking to the Federal Government for help in this recession and begging them to put partisanship aside and get something accomplished.

What Is a Party?

My personal definition of a political party really is as simple “as a group of people who have similar ideas on how the country should be run.” In the history of our world, these groups of people have become a bit more simplified and official, so to speak. By this I mean there are plenty of leniencies in our (America’s) party system in regards to ideology. Some people consider the terms Liberals and Conservatives to be political parties but I believe those terms define a person’s placement on a political spectrum based on ideologies. A Conservative might associate themselves with the Republican Party and Liberals with the Democratic Party, but this is most definitely not always the case.

George Washington would not have approved of these "factions" we have today.
"The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government."

"All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.."

In Washington's farewell speech he seems to allude to the idea that these Parties are destructive organizations to create conflict among citizens. He was right.

Tom Delay took a much different approach in his farewell speech. According to the Washington Post "DeLay suggested that pundits who complain about 'the divisive partisan rancor that supposedly weakens our democracy" are merely nostalgic for the days when most Republicans meekly accepted minority status. DeLay was never one of those Republicans.'" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801342.html)

Party Politics

A little about me: I am 23 years old and in August I will commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force for Space & Missiles. Aside from that, I am obsessed with music and really just want to be a dirty, BREWERS lovin’ conservative hippy and go on tour with my favorite bands and play with nature. Yes I have a lot of inner turmoil.

This is my second time taking this class so my fear is that I will not get the grade I need and my hope is that I will. I also hope to get a better understanding of the topics discussed and be able to better apply my knowledge.