President Obama, the Tea Party Movement, and the Crisis of the American Party System

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Berg
Watchdog ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 27-39
Author(s):  
Richard Cordray

Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sparking a bitter partisan battle. The bureau’s mission—to help individual consumers cope with their financial problems and to ward off future crises like the 2008 financial collapse—posed a direct challenge to the financial industry. As the industry has grown, it has also greatly expanded its power in Washington through extensive political contributions and lobbying efforts. Its support for the Tea Party movement shifted the political balance in the 2010 elections. Using its political might, the industry opposed the bureau and then sought to block confirmation of anyone as its director, hoping to hobble efforts to operationalize it. On Elizabeth Warren’s recommendation, President Obama nominated Richard Cordray to be the first director, starting a fight over his confirmation that would last two years.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Grossmann ◽  
David A. Hopkins

Scholarship commonly implies that the major political parties in the United States are configured as mirror images to each other, but the two sides actually exhibit important and underappreciated differences. The Republican Party is primarily the agent of an ideological movement whose supporters prize doctrinal purity, while the Democratic Party is better understood as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action. This asymmetry is reinforced by American public opinion, which favors left-of-center positions on most specific policy issues yet simultaneously shares the general conservative preference for smaller and less active government. Each party therefore faces a distinctive governing challenge in balancing the unique demands of its base with the need to maintain broad popular support. This foundational difference between the parties also explains why the rise of the Tea Party movement among Republicans in recent years has not been accompanied by an equivalent ideological insurgency among Democrats.


Author(s):  
Anthony Sparacino

Abstract This article examines the origins and early activities of the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations (DGA and RGA, respectively) from the RGA's initial founding in 1961 through the 1968 national nominating conventions. I argue that the formations of these organizations were key moments in the transition from a decentralized to a more integrated and nationally programmatic party system. The DGA and RGA represent gubernatorial concern for and engagement in the development of national party programs and the national party organizations. Governors formed these groups because of the increasing importance of national government programs on the affairs of state governments and the recognition on the part of governors that national partisan politics was having critical effects on electoral outcomes at the state level, through the reputations of the national parties. To varying extents, the governors used these organizations to promote the national parties and contributed to national party-building efforts and the development of national party brands.


1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Howard A. Scarrow

It is both humbling and encouraging to recall notions that Americans once entertained of the British political system. Critics of F.D.R. looked enviously at the British Parliament for its reputed ability to hold the executive firmly accountable for its actions. Somewhat later, observers on both sides of the Atlantic supposed that Britain was blessed with an absence of pressure groups. Would-be reformers of the American party system further implied that British voters cast their ballots according to the content of party programs, and that party cohesion was the result of discipline imposed by a centralized party organization able to deny renomination to recalcitrant M.P.'s. Careful analyses of intra-party workings, pressure-group activity, and voting behavior have now dispelled these and other mistaken impressions, and it seems likely that the contours of our understanding of these subjects have now been established. However, additional frontiers of knowledge of the British political system remain to be charted; one of these is government at the local level.


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