Paris, parties and partisanship

Many students write that American parties are catch-all or umbrella organisations

OK, Paris Hilton was a hook. Which I’ll get to later.
In American Politics, it is remains fashionable for students to write that American parties are like two empty bottles, each indistinguishable from one another. This view, largely based on David Broder’s 1970’s text “The Party’s Over”, is, however largely seen as outmoded

Parties today, whilst not uniform, are clearly much more ideologically cohesive and distinct from one another than at any stage in the last 40 years.

One only has to look at voting records in Congress, party platforms, voter preferences, and elections to see this trend developing. True, parties are not completely uniform, and some Democrats hold views that are more socially conservative than their GOP rivals, but to say that these individuals would be happier in the Republican ranks because of this is wide of the mark: just because someone holds strict anti-abortion views does not make them a Republican of they also believe in tougher gun control and an extnsion of federally funded health care for those not insured.

This ideological distinction has, to my mind, been driven by the Republicans, who have driven a small government agenda ever since the Barry Goldwater days. Motivated by a disappointment in the failure of big government, and sold as a campaign to restore American values built on the myth of rugged individualism, the party has steadily shifted to the right. Why do I say it is a myth? Whilst I agree with the likes of PJ O’Rourke that it is probably easier to a become a millionaire by legitimate means in the USA than anywhere else on earth, there is strong evidence to suggest that America is less meritocratic than the UK (even though social mobility has decreased in both countries in recent decades). If you scratch beneath the surface of stories of successful individuals or families who apparently started form nothing you will see that the vast majority of them did not start from anything like a level playing field. In other words, would anyone have had heard of Paris Hilton were it not for her father’s enormous wealth? An extreme case, but all I could come up ina short space with that would pull readers in.

Anyway, back to the hard politics. Evidence of the revival of parties can be evidenced by looking at polls on Obama. You may have read that Obama is the most polarising President when we take into account the views of Republican and Democrat supporters. This is true, but further thinking (but which doesn’t discount the headlines figures) about this reveals why this is the case.

Andrew Sullivan explains why:

‘It was a slim reed but former Bush officials understandably grasped it. A lone poll last week showed a large gap in Barack Obama’s approval ratings between Democratic and Republican voters. The Pew poll found, as Karl Rove boasted in The Wall Street Journal, that Obama “has the most polarised early job approval of any president since surveys began tracking this 40 years ago. The gap between Mr Obama’s approval rating among Democrats (88%) and Republicans (27%) is 61 points”. This is 10 points larger than George W Bush’s partisan gap after the brutal polarising period of the 2000 election recount.

The poll measures a gap between Democrats and Republicans, but it doesn’t tell you how many there are of each. Self-identifying Republicans now form only 24% of the American electorate, their lowest showing in recent memory, and far lower than at the start of Bush’s term. And those who are left in the rump tend to be more conservative and more ideological than a larger, more heterogeneous group.

You can see this by a simple measure: some 68% of Republicans identify as ideological conservatives while only 37% of Democrats identify as ideological liberals. When the Republican party is much smaller, more ideological, and more radical than the Democrats, of course a Democratic president will prompt more angry and motivated opposition than a Republican. And so Bush won support from a generous 36% of Democrats in April 2001; while Obama gets only 27% support from Republicans.’

So America is polarising. Whilst less voters now say they identify with a party, there are relatively more who strongly identify than before. But we must bear in mind the relative size of these groups when considering their views with reference to one policy or individual.

And as a last point of analysis it should be noted that of those who claim to be independents, surveys show they lean either Republican or Democrat at elections the vast majority of the time.

A bit like the myth of rugged individualism, America does not match up to the proclamation of independence to anywhere near the same degree in reality.

See Sullivan’s article in full here.