Democratic and Republican Parties Have Been Able Essay

Democratic and Republican parties have been able to maintain their strength and their membership numbers since the Civil War for both structural and ideological reasons. The ideological reasons are the most obvious to an observer and to many members of the parties; indeed it is because of the ideological positions of the two parties that people align themselves by party. The ideologies of each party are complex; a better way of describing them might be that they are intricate combinations of different ideas and ideologies. The Republican Party has consistently championed economic systems that do not favor efficient distributions of wealth and has tended toward a low degree of government intervention and regulation in economic issues and a high degree of intervention and regular in social affairs (such as abortion and civil rights). The parties endure because these ideologies (which are tied to ongoing concerns and beliefs) endure.

Single-member district systems along with primaries (which are intra-party contests for the selection of a candidate to face the selected candidate of another party) both tend to favor incumbency and party members who are more extreme than moderate.This tendency to select more partisan members to run in general elections tends to keep the differences between the two parties ongoing.

In a realigning election, a party that has had relatively less power gains a substantial amount of power very quickly, such as the Newt Gingrich's engineered Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

Essay Two

Americans generally think that they are more informed about the political process than they are, in no small part because they tend to listen to and read political coverage that confirms and reinforces their previous beliefs. Initially, these beliefs are formed (as are beliefs in general) by the beliefs of family members, friend, and communities. Political….....