The following post deals exclusively with American politics. If you're not interested in that kind of thing, I suggest you skip it.
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On 2002-12-19 05:30, sco08y wrote:
Never, ever, ever equate a political party with an ideology. First off, majority political parties have to have a "big tent" culture to survive, so they will always have both wings. Second, they are totally different in character at different levels of government. My parents, both conservatives, voted for a Democrat mayor because she was an honest, right-wing businesswoman, in preference to the sleazy Republican she replaced. Third, the party has little control over who joins it. There is a platform, but it's quite vague and actually abiding by it is up to the candidate. David Duke can run as a Republican and they can completely ostracize him, run other candidates against him in the primaries, but that's it. They don't own any trademark they can enforce or anything like that.
Political parties are based around ideologies; if this was not the case, the platforms of high-level candidates would not hew so closely to the party line. This is especially true in high-level (read: state governorships, federal-level congressmen, and above) positions, mostly since there's a number of mechanisms in place to keep elected party members sticking to the party's ideology at the federal level. That doesn't keep occasional people from jumping ship, of course--just look at 2001--but going seriously against the party line is political suicide without a strong personal following (which tends to be fairly rare). At lower government levels, and even to some degree at the level of Congress, campaigns tend to be governed by personal following and charisma, making party less important; this is supported by the proliferation of minor parties at lower levels of government, as well as by the occasional election of write-in candidates.
At the presidental or (to a lesser extent) congressional level, party ideology becomes vitally important, in direct relation to the degree that personal following becomes insignificant. There's several reasons for this, but most relate to the great differences in scale between local and federal campaigns. In most states' primary elections, for example (I'll take presidential campaigns as an example, as they provide the best illustration of the process), only members of a party can vote for candidates for that party (California, until recently, was an exception to this rule); while it is true that, in most states, candidates can run as any party they please, the character of elections is such that only those conforming closely to the party's general ideology stand a chance of winning the primary election. The "party line" differs by region, it is true, but on a national level it tends to be surprisingly constant (although this can easily piss off extreme members of both wings).
The amount of control parties have over candidates varies by region; in most cases, it takes the form of various measures to control access (candidates listed on ballot cards, and the like). Parties also have almost absolute (except where limited by law) control over campaign money, which is frequently a deciding factor; I'm sure we've all heard that the campaign on which the most money is spent almost always wins. It's worth noting that donations to political parties are not nearly as circumscribed as donations to individual candidates.
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In general, there *is* a substantial difference between the character of the parties. The Democrat party views itself as a patchwork of different cultures with different needs. The strength of this is that they project a more inclusive message, the weakness is that they're 0wn3d by special interest groups (trial lawyers, unions, etc.) and tend to play victim politics. The Republican party views itself as a collection of individuals bound by principles. The strength of this is that they tend to be more consistent, the weakness is that they often practice "benign neglect" (the policy towards blacks since Nixon) and have a hard time selling their message to those so neglected.
Your comments reflect the prejudices of your political views more than any clear grasp of realities. Many (I can't speak for "most", particularly since I am not a member of the American Democratic Party) Democrats believe the reverse: that the Republican Party is a loose coalition of business and personal interests and that the Democratic Party is bound by a common devotion to personal well-being for all citizens. Both views are self-serving at best and most likely false.
Now, unless you have something to say about guns, will you kindly get the hell out of my thread? If you want to debate the root values of American political parties, there's plenty of space on Kyhm's hard drive to make new threads on.
P-M
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