The Party-Group Alignment of the NRA and the GOP

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-185
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
National Rifle Association ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Active Player ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Party Group

This chapter chronicles the party–group alignment of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the GOP, detailing the constellation of factors that collectively facilitated this alignment, which began in the 1960s, culminated during the 1980 election, and has deepened in the decades since. It reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a group social identity and gun-centric political ideology made its supporters an attractive demographic group to conservative politicians, and laid the foundation for the group's eventual incorporation into the Republican coalition. The chapter also delves into the NRA's motivations for entering the realm of partisan politics, showing how funding challenges and internal conflicts led to the 1977 “Revolt at Cincinnati,” after which the NRA quickly became an active player in GOP politics. Ultimately, the chapter analyzes public opinion polls to document gun owners' increasing close relationship with the Republican Party — especially following the election of President Donald Trump.

Explaining the NRA’s Power

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-43
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Political Power ◽  
National Rifle Association ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Party Group

This chapter lays out a framework for answering why supporters of gun rights are so dedicated to their cause and why the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its members have such an important place in the Republican Party. It discusses how the NRA has crafted a worldview around guns, consisting of both a gun owner social identity and a broader political ideology. The chapter then looks into greater detail about each of these central ideas: the ideational resources of identity and ideology, and the party–group alignment that has been so central to the NRA's more recent political power. The chapter ends by circling back to the previous chapter's discussion of political power, exploring what the NRA can teach us about how power is built and exercised.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-238
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
National Rifle Association ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Gun Debate

This chapter looks toward the future of both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun debate more broadly. It discusses potential threats to the NRA's political influence, including its own internal struggles, the rise of more effective gun control advocacy organizations, and the potential downsides of its close relationship with the Republican Party. The chapter also talks about the potential generalizability of the book's findings to other groups and policy areas. It considers the lessons that other groups might learn from the NRA in terms of cultivating and using ideational power. Ultimately, the chapter notes its implications for our understanding of interest groups and political parties, and reflects on the NRA's place in American democracy.

scholarly journals The American Cultural War and the Restructuring of Kentucky Politics

SAGE Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824401987105
Author(s):  
James Larry Hood
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
National History ◽  
Political Configuration ◽  
The 1960S

The study is an integration of the last six decades’ local, state, and national history concerning the correlation of border state Kentucky’s partisan politics with the events and themes of the country’s long cultural war. Beginning in the 1960s, the two national parties gradually became far more distinct from one another concerning cultural values. The Democratic Party supported results-oriented affirmative action, a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, and the need for a powerful, active federal government to protect and encourage all the above. The Republican Party took none of these positions. This led to a new political configuration along rearranged racial, demographic, geographic, and party lines. Where once Kentucky’s Democratic Party had near total control of state offices and Republicans had won federal offices now and then, the new configuration had Republicans threatening to control both federal and state offices.

Putting Donald Trump in Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug McAdam
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Behavior

The tumultuous onset of Donald Trump’s administration has so riveted public attention that observers are in danger of losing a historical perspective. Trump’s rhetoric and behavior are so extreme that the tendency is to see him and the divisions he embodies as something new in American politics. Instead, Trump is only the most extreme expression of a brand of racial politics practiced ever more brazenly by the Republican Party since the 1960s. His unexpected rise to power was aided by a number of institutional developments in American politics that also have older roots. In the spirit of trying to understand these historical forces, the chapter describes (a) the origins and evolution of the exclusionary brand of racial politics characteristic of the Republican Party since the 1960s, and (b) three illiberal institutions that aided Trump’s rise to power, and that, if left unchanged, will continue to threaten the survival of American democracy.

The Veil of Bureaucracy: How Officials Evade Partisan Politics in Participatory Settings

2021 ◽  
pp. 232949652110288
Author(s):  
Meaghan Stiman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Community Voice ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Local Decision ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Local Decision Making ◽  
Do So

In theory, participatory democracies are thought to empower citizens in local decision-making processes. However, in practice, community voice is rarely representative, and even in cases of equal representation, citizens are often disempowered through bureaucratic processes. Drawing on the case of a firearm discharge debate from a rural county’s municipal meetings in Virginia, I extend research about how power operates in participatory settings. Partisan political ideology fueled the debate amongst constituents in expected ways, wherein citizens engaged collectivist and individualist frames to sway the county municipal board ( Celinska 2007 ). However, it was a third frame that ultimately explains the ordinance’s repeal: the bureaucratic frame, an ideological orientation to participatory processes that defers decision-making to disembodied abstract rules and procedures. This frame derives its power from its depoliticization potential, allowing bureaucrats to evade contentious political debates. Whoever is best able to wield this frame not only depoliticizes the debate to gain rationalized legitimacy but can do so in such a way to favor a partisan agenda. This study advances gun research and participatory democracy research by analyzing how the bureaucratic frame, which veils partisanship, offers an alternative political possibility for elected officials, community leaders, and citizens to adjudicate partisan debates.

Firepower

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Mass Shootings ◽  
National Rifle Association ◽  
Powerful Interest ◽  
Active Base

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations — even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related deaths. This book provides an unprecedented look at how this controversial organization built its political power and deploys it on behalf of its pro-gun agenda. Taking readers from the 1930s to the age of Donald Trump, the book traces how the NRA's immense influence on national politics arises from its ability to shape the political outlooks and actions of its followers. The book draws on nearly a century of archival records and surveys to show how the organization has fashioned a distinct worldview around gun ownership and has used it to mobilize its supporters. It reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a large, unified, and active base has enabled it to build a resilient alliance with the Republican Party, and examines why the NRA and its members formed an important constituency that helped fuel Trump's unlikely political rise. The book sheds vital new light on how the NRA has grown powerful by mobilizing average Americans, and how it uses its GOP alliance to advance its objectives and shape the national agenda.

The French Factor in U.S. Foreign Policy during the Nixon-Pompidou Period

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Nuclear Area ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Sharp Turn ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter discusses relations between France and the United States under the Nixon administration. When Nixon took office as president in early 1969, he and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger wanted to put America's relationship with France on an entirely new footing. Relations between the two countries in the 1960s, and especially from early 1963 on, had been far from ideal. Nixon and Kissinger tried to develop a close relationship with the Pompidou government and in the early Nixon–Pompidou period the two governments were on very good terms. Both governments were also interested in developing a certain relationship in the nuclear area. However, by 1973 relations between the two countries took a sharp turn for the worse. The chapter considers what went wrong and why the attempt to develop a close relationship failed.

Religious Non-Affiliation

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-193
Author(s):  
William V. Trollinger
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Success

For the past century, the bulk of white evangelicalism has been tightly linked to very conservative politics. But in response to social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s, conservative white evangelicalism organized itself into the Christian Right, in the process attaching itself to and making itself indispensable to the Republican Party. While the Christian Right has enjoyed significant political success, its fusion of evangelicalism/Christianity with right-wing politics—which includes white nationalism, hostility to immigrants, unfettered capitalism, and intense homophobia—has driven many Americans (particularly, young Americans) to disaffiliate from religion altogether. In fact, the quantitative and qualitative evidence make it clear that the Christian Right has been a (perhaps the) primary reason for the remarkable rise of the religious “nones” in the past three decades. More than this, the Christian Right is, in itself, a sign of secularization.

How Texas Turned Red

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-108
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
Dormant State ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explains how Texas came to align with the Republican Party. Texas is now the essential Republican state, but for most of its history it was part of the solid Democratic South. In the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Democratic Party divided into liberal and conservative factions—partly over race and civil rights but also over a range of questions including New Deal economic policies and anti-communism. Texas Democrats engaged in what V. O. Key called the most intense intraparty fight of any state in the South. The long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s as many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left. Republican gains produced a period of balanced two-party competition that lasted from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the early 2000s, the GOP established dominance, making Texas the nation’s largest and most powerful Republican state.

Return of the Nativists?

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-283
Author(s):  
Elliott R. Barkan
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Illegal Immigration ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigrants ◽  
Perceptions And Expectations ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Job Competition ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Anti-immigrant sentiments in California during the early 1990s raised questions about that state's association with nativism, the impact of recessions on public anxieties, and the validity of public opinion polls in measuring related attitudes and concerns. A series of California Field Polls administered statewide between 1982 and 1998 (most samples exceeding 1,000 persons) were used to examine Californians’ attitudes regarding legal and illegal immigration, amnesty for undocumented aliens, identification cards for immigrants, and job competition between immigrants and Americans. Employing cross-tabulations and logistic regression, the study found a consistent relationship between responses to the issues and such demographic variables as political ideology, education, age, income, Protestant religion, and Latino ethnicity as well as between those responses and shifts in respondents’ financial perceptions and expectations. The study concludes that California was more likely a microcosm of the nation, reflecting its dual attitudes toward immigrants, rather than the leader of a neonativist movement.

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