Modern politics: Public is more partisan, parties are powerless

Modern politics: Public is more partisan, parties are powerless

By Bruce J. Schulman at Reuters

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/11/03/u-s-politics-people-are-more-partisan-the-parties-are-powerless/

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By the late 1960s, parties seemed on a path to extinction. For the first time, independents began to outnumber voters identifying themselves as strong partisans. With few patronage jobs to dole out, less control over the nominating process, which opened to more and more primary voters, and reforms that weakened the congressional leadership’s power over individual members, experts began to mourn (or celebrate) the death of partisan affiliations.

Over the past generation, however, a remarkable new trend has developed. Partisan polarization has intensified. “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines,” according to recent studies by the Pew Research Center, for example. Pew found that “partisan acrimony is deeper and more extensive than at any point in recent history.” Mimicking the Gilded Age, partisan identities shape not just political behavior but also affect a broad range of attitudes about everyday life. By many other measures, from party identification among voters to party-line votes in Congress, partisanship has resurged.

But while groups like the Republican and Democratic national committees employ more people and spend far more money than they did a generation ago, party organizations remain weak. With little or no local presence, they resemble consulting firms or super PACs more than the mass-mobilizing machines of the Gilded Age.

Though rigid party-line votes define today’s Congress, they reflect the ideological sorting of the two parties into consistently conservative and liberal camps rather than party discipline. Legislative leaders like recently departed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have found it almost impossible to rein in their caucuses, while party leaders, despite their best efforts, have proved unable to suppress the insurgent campaigns of Trump and Carson, or impose rules that would favor candidates that hew closest to the party line.


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