The Tea Party and Republicanism 2010

According to this piece on the political blog The Hill, the primary voting season has shown the power of Sarah Palin, the Tea-Party's first lady and former governor of Alaska, on the political scene. Specifically candidates who she has supported in the run-up to the November mid-terms have been successful, and notably more right-wing than the candidates they beat.

The ins-and-outs of this won't be especially useful for G&P students, except that it'll be interesting to note what happens in November, especially if Obama supporters stay away from the polls.

Of note for anyone contemplating the direction of the Republican party is the news that former political renegade and maverick John McCain kept his seat in Alaska because he supported positions more right-wing, especially on immigration, than he has previously.

Another interesting development is that because of the generally anti-politician feeling in the states, there are politicians attempting to be different. Marco Rubio, a Republican Senate seat nominee is doing this by avoiding the Tea Party and having an actual set of policies he would like to put into practice when in office. The comment by the Economist's Democracy in America blog is pretty scathing about his policies for which the numbers don't add up:

It's true that advancing policy proposals is more courageous than running on facile outrage: having an agenda courts the risk that people will take your agenda apart. Nonetheless, I don't find it convincing to praise Mr Rubio simply for having put forward an agenda. The problem remains that Mr Rubio suffers from a fundamental malady that afflicts the entire tea-party movement. Tea-partiers who believe that the federal government must dramatically cut its budget deficit remain resolutely unwilling to draw the inevitable conclusion: either taxes must go dramatically up, or major, popular federal programmes (defence, Social Security, Medicare) must be dramatically cut. One thing we should have learned from the 2000 elections, and the budgetary debacles that have followed, is that an unwillingness to make the numbers in your proposals add up is a character flaw of the first order.

The other way is being the non-politician's politician and telling anyone who'd listen that you will not doing negative campaigning (i.e. attacking the character and policies of your opponent). For an example of the genre, take a look at the ad by Colorado Democratic-governor candidate John Hickenlooper:



As a rejoinder to that, here is a piece by CBS news about negative campaigning from John McCain in the 2008 presidential race:



All of which is useful stuff for anyone contemplating the impact of pressure groups on parties (or even of factions within parties), elections, and the policies of the Republican party.

The limits of Presidential power; Gay marriage and the New York Mosque

Some interesting articles about the limits of presidential power, and why they should (or shouldn't depending on your point of view) get involved in complex domestic issues which polarise opinion.

There are two current news stories which relate to this; the first being Gay marriage and Proposition 8 which I have posted about before, and the second being the proposal to build a mosque in New York near the site of the September 11 attacks, Ground Zero.

Essentially there are two arguments about whether Presidents should get involved and show their support one way or the other. President Obama has repeatedly said that he was against gay marriage, but that the way to prevent it should be done through the states and not in an amendment to the constitution. This position has caused an outcry in certain circles, notably this piece on the CBS News web-site:

Obama argues that he is against gay marriage while also opposing efforts like Prop 8 that would ban it. He justifies this by saying that state constitutions should not be used to reduce rights. (His exact words: "I am not in favor of gay marriage, but when you’re playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about.")

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The Economist's Democracy in America blog, predictably, has a more cautious message; that for a president to come out and support an issue makes that issue instantly politicised and polarised:

But that, of course, is the point: presidents are expected to operate within existing political conditions, not engage in theoretical speculation. What would have been the actual political consequences of a decision by Barack Obama to come out in favour of gay marriage in the past year and a half? I don't think there can be any doubt that such a move would have re-politicised an issue that, remarkably, has become steadily less partisan in recent years.

The second issue which has become a political hot-potato recently is the outrage which has followed the announcement that a mosque was to be built in New York near Ground Zero. Strangely, for a multi-racial and multi-cultural society Americans and their politicians have overwhelmingly come out against the plan. This is, obviously, despite the fact that the attacks on Sept 11th were against thousands of people of all faiths, including Muslims.

President Obama at first seemed to come out in favour of the mosque-building plan, but then seemed to change tack and say that he was not discussing the wisdom of building it, but rather that the Islamic organisation in question had the right to do so. Arguably, this is another case where Obama is being cautious and is trying to avoid making the issue any more partisan than it is already.

I find it interesting, that according to this piece here, New York City has over 100 mosques already, for the 8.4 million inhabitants. According to this poll by the right-leaning Fox News, there is support for the right to build, but not the wisdom (commentary by politics web-site Five-Thirty-eight):

A group of Muslims plans to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center a few blocks from the site of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Do you think it is appropriate to build a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero, or do you think it would be wrong to do so?
Only 30 percent of respondents said "appropriate", while 64 percent said "wrong" -- consistent with the apparent unpopularity of the mosque in other polls.

But Fox also followed up with this question:
Regardless of whether you think it is appropriate to build a mosque near ground zero, do you think the Muslim group has the right to build a mosque there, or don’t they have that right?

Here, the numbers were nearly reversed: 61 percent of respondents, including 69 percent of independents and 57 percent of Republicans, said the developers had the right to build the mosque; 34 percent said they did not.

New York Times columnist Stephen Budiansky has a great graphic on his blog which summarises the absurdity of the furore in the run-up to the mid-terms very neatly:

Essentially both of the stories above are grounded in the rights of Americans to act as enshrined in the constitution, attempts to curtail those rights, and whether or not presidents should get involved in these key issues.

Interesting stuff for G&P students contemplating the limitations of presidential power.

Tea Party and God

An interesting post here by the BBC's Mark Mardell about the Tea Party Movement and religion; interesting analysis about the movement's relationship with the Christian right. Also, he highlights the problem that the Tea Party doesn't have a centre or much cohesiveness.

Useful stuff for G&P students contemplating the impact of pressure groups or popular movements on political parties.

Marriage and the 14th Amendment

In a previous post I wrote about the overturning of California's Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, by the US District Court. I thought it was interesting to note Schwarzenegger's position in this given that he is socially quite liberal; his name is on the case because he is California's Governor and while he opposes the ban he felt it was an important constitutional issue which needed to be decided in court.

The Democracy in America blog from the Economist has linked to a couple of video clips which show two of the lawyers involved in the overturning of the ban defending their position against the best that the Republican Party can throw at them: Essentially the right to marriage is a fundamental right under the constitution as decided in a number of previous Supreme Court judgements. The 14th Amendment which ensures equal treatment under the law includes the right of all Americans to get married to the person of their choice, irrespective of race or sexual orientation. Fundamental rights are ones which cannot be taken away by the states through laws or through public vote (as happened with Proposition 8):





Interestingly, the Republicans' argument in favour of a ban on gay marriage are shown in both clips to be very weak indeed. The second clip was initially found here.

Prime Ministerial power

An interesting story here about the decision-making process in government; Universities minister David "Two-brains" Willetts was on-air discussing budget cutting in the education sector and said that scrapping free milk for the under-5s was an option being considered. During the interview, Downing St contacted the BBC to say that David Cameron didn't like the idea and that it wasn't happening.

Various newspapers have their own take on the story, the Daily Mail here, the Independent here and the Mirror here. It is interesting for G&P students because it can be used in discussions about coalition policy, and also about Prime Ministerial power and the process of policy-making (before the PM moved in, it was a policy that had been discussed at length in government, and was worth £50m a year).

As pointed out here by Bagehot in the Economist, the PM disliked the milk policy because it was an echo of Margaret Thatcher's policy of ending school milk to the over 7s in 1971. There are issues about whether it is wise for the PM to have the power to arbitrarily decide on policy (further echoes, this time of Tony Blair's sofa government) rather than it being a cabinet decision, which can be discussed at length in any relevant essay.

Supreme court and gun control

In my mammoth posting yesterday I forgot to mention another key decision which will have a significant impact on US society; the decision of McDonald v Chicago (2010) which essentially has thrown out various pieces of gun-control legislation and underlined the 2nd Amendment which discusses a "well-armed militia". Ultimately the Supreme Court has said that Americans have the right to bear arms and to keep them. An earlier case, DC v Heller (2008) also supported the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms, but the most recent decision clarified some areas, specifically which parts of America the case referred to. Both decisions were voted on 5-4.

This CS Monitor article is useful, as is this post from Reason. The Economist reports on developments here too.

The right to bear arms is not without its limitations (i.e. not having a gun near a school for example), but the ability of states and the federal government to restrict gun-ownership has been curtailed. Various court cases will follow, and this will determine exactly how much power the states and local government has to limit gun ownership. Pressure Groups the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation will doubtless get involved.

For now, G&P students could make a clear argument that these two cases represent another move in a conservative direction in the history of the Supreme Court and its judgements (the only previous court case which referred to the Second Amendment occurred in 1939, with US v Miller). The legal arguments in the cases are probably not terribly useful in an essay, although Justice Alito did write the majority opinion in the McDonald case.

Another, possibly very charitable, interpretation is that the Second Amendment has always been seen as a guarantor in favour of gun ownership, and the Supreme Court was merely recognising that. The decision does not stop states from bringing in gun-control legislation in the future as this piece about Chicago's plans shows.

I'll finish by quoting the Economist piece above which explains the second interpretation well:

And yet campaigners for gun control have not been cast into utter gloom. They are consoled by the fact that in this week’s ruling Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, made a point of repeating something else the court said in Heller: the right to keep and bear arms is not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose”. The court emphasised two years ago that it was not questioning longstanding regulations such as preventing felons and the mentally ill from owning guns, or keeping guns out of sensitive places such as schools or government buildings. “We repeat those assurances here,” wrote Mr Alito in the new opinion.

Labour leadership race and the coalition

An interesting piece here from Bagehot in the Economist, discussing the Labour leadership race (we're in for a Miliband), and the direction of the coalition and conservatism under David Cameron (he's not merely a Thatcherite, but something more interesting).

Congress, the opposite of progress

Interesting stuff here about procedures in the Senate from the New Yorker magazine (I found it from this post on the Economist's Democracy in America blog).

Essentially, the Senate is there to slow down the passage of legislation, and on the whole that is not necessarily a good thing:

The two lasting achievements of this Senate, financial regulation and health care, required a year and a half of legislative warfare that nearly destroyed the body. They depended on a set of circumstances—a large majority of Democrats, a charismatic President with an electoral mandate, and a national crisis—that will not last long or be repeated anytime soon. Two days after financial reform became law, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would not take up comprehensive energy-reform legislation for the rest of the year. And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans’ care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing.

Arizona and race, California and sex

A quick post to round off my evening, to mention the anti-illegal immigration law that Arizona has passed which it highly contentious.

The Democracy in America blog discusses it here, and the BBC's Mark Mardell does here. Suffice to say, there are complex issues here, including race and racism, complicated by the mid-terms coming up in November when everyone in politics is desperate to get their supporters out.

California's Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, was overturned in the US District Court in Perry v Schwarzenegger. Interesting, because Proposition was a direct piece of legislation voted on by Californians rather than politicians and because the fight about marriage in law is likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court. It is also interesting because it is a highly polarising measure (Democrats against, Republicans for). It also illustrates neatly the legislative process in America and also the ballot proposition measure in California, in which the two sides in the debate raised almost $85 million between them. The Democracy in America blog discusses it here.

I'll leave the final word to Judge Walker who decided the case:

PROPOSITION 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.

Republicans and the Tea Party 2

More about Republicans and the Tea Party movement from the Blog / independent news outfit "Mother Jones". Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis was a conservative "firebrand" in the 1990s, was given a 93% rating by the American Conservative Union and became more moderate since re-election in 2004. What is interesting for G&P students is the impact of the Tea Party on his race for re-election and what it means for the Republicans in general.

In short, Inglis lost in the primary election to a Tea-Party approved candidate. His crime was not being prepared to call President Obama a "socialist" and to support some of the more interesting ideas from the Tea Party, and even to propose working with the president:

When he returned to the House in 2005, Inglis, though still a conservative, was more focused on policy solutions than ideological battle. After Obama entered the White House, Inglis worked up a piece of campaign literature—in the form of a cardboard coaster that flipped open—that noted that Republicans should collaborate (not compromise) with Democrats to produce workable policies. "America's looking for solutions, not wedges," it read. He met with almost every member of the House Republican caucus to make his pitch: "What we needed to be is the adults who say absolutely we will work with [the new president]."

Instead, he remarks, his party turned toward demagoguery. Inglis lists the examples: falsely claiming Obama's health care overhaul included "death panels," raising questions about Obama's birthplace, calling the president a socialist, and maintaining that the Community Reinvestment Act was a major factor of the financial meltdown. "CRA," Inglis says, "has been around for decades. How could it suddenly create this problem? You see how that has other things worked into it?" Racism? "Yes," Inglis says.

What happens in the future?

Inglis is a casualty of the tea party-ization of the Republican Party. Given the decisive vote against him in June, it's clear he was wiped out by a political wave that he could do little to thwart. "Emotionally, I should be all right with this," he says. And when he thinks about what lies ahead for his party and GOP House leaders, he can't help but chuckle. With Boehner and others chasing after the tea party, he says, "that's going to be the dog that catches the car." He quickly adds: "And the Democrats, if they go into the minority, are going to have an enjoyable couple of years watching that dog deal with the car it's caught."

Useful stuff for anyone contemplating what the Republican party stands for, and possibly the impact of pressure groups on parties. Also, you can use it to discuss primary elections.

Supreme Court - conservative or liberal?

One of the possible questions which can be asked about the Supreme Court is whether the court is conservative or liberal. I'm not going to go into the theoretical part in too much depth here (afterall, that is what the lessons are for), except to say that any good answer needs to have a thorough understanding of the position of the court in relation to the other branches of the US government, to the Constitution, and to public opinion.

I've come across a great article in the NY Times about the conservatism of the Supreme Court which explains why the Roberts court is more conservative than its predecessors. Political scientists who study such things allocate a label of either "conservative" or "liberal" to the court decisions, and then add up how many of either there are iver the lifetime of the court. There are obvious problems with this methodology, which the article touches on, but nevertheless it is still useful stuff for any essay.

In short, the Roberts court has become more conservative than its predecessors, although not by very much. It has overturned fewer precedents (i.e. previous decisions by the SC), and struck down fewer laws passed by Congress. As I love a graph, look at these two:

The original graphs can be found here and the article here.

The switch was caused by the retirement of Justice O'Connor, who had been the "swing" justice in cased where there was a split 5-4. She was seen as a liberal and was more on the centre-left in her final years. She was replaced by Justice Alito who is one of the highly conservative justices (he is one of the six most conservative justices since 1937, three of the others are all currently on the bench).

The swing justice today is Kennedy, who is less liberal than O'Connor was. Overall the court has moved to the right. The Alito case is interesting (as the NYT shows); he was President GW Bush's second choice as the Republicans rebelled against a more moderate and less conservative Harriet Miers.

The article cites certain key cases, such as the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (2010) which overturned the earlier decision McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003). Essentially the earlier case upheld the constitutionality of restrictions on organisations to spend money and advertise during election campaigns (the McCain-Feingold Act).

The right to abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade (1973) was challenged by Steinberg v Carhart (2000) which wanted to ban Intact dilation and extraction (aka "partial-birth" abortions). The court overturned the law, but in 2007 it allowed the banning of partial-birth abortions through the case Gonzales v Carhart. Although the cases are different, arguably the court's conservative shift is clearly shown here.

The court had not gone as far as overturning Roe v Wade, but certain rights and procedures had been removed.

Another clear area in which the court changed its mind recalls aspects of Brown v Board of Education (1954), which banned race from being a factor in deciding education provision ("separate but equal"). Twice since 2000 the court has decided that race could be a factor when determining education provision, but only in the form of "affirmative action". In general terms this is a policy supported by liberals and Democrats (it was started by Democratic President Kennedy).

Grutter v Bollinger (2003) said that race could be a factor when determining admissions to the University of Mitchigan Law School, and this was upheld by the SC. In Parents v Seattle School District No. 1 (2007) (i.e. after O'Connor's departure) the court decided that race could not be a determining factor when deciding on admissions to high schools, reversing its own decision.

Abortion and race are probably the most obvious and most contentious areas of US political debate, so the cases described above care probably the ones which would be easiest to use (and remember) in an essay. Examiners would be very keen to hear about other areas of political debate too, and if explained fully this might help demonstrate "thorough" understanding and gain more marks.

A health warning must be issued; these cases are highly complex, so it is worth bearing in mind this:

“Supreme Court justices do not acknowledge that any of their decisions are influenced by ideology rather than by neutral legal analysis,” William M. Landes, an economist at the University of Chicago, and Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge, wrote last year in The Journal of Legal Analysis.

Also - while the court is not required to listen to public opinion, largely the public have supported their decisions on race and abortion:

“Solid majorities want the court to uphold Roe v. Wade and are in favor of abortion rights in the abstract,” one of the studies concluded. “However, equally substantial majorities favor procedural and other restrictions, including waiting periods, parental consent, spousal notification and bans on ‘partial birth’ abortion.”

However:

The Roberts court has not yet decided a major religion case, but the public has not always approved of earlier rulings in this area. For instance, another study in the 2008 book found that “public opinion has remained solidly against the court’s landmark decisions declaring school prayer unconstitutional.”

Few! Lots here to mull over, including the fact that overall Supreme Court justices reflect the political persuasion of the President in office when they first joined; Stevens and Souter being the Republican-appointed-and-liberal-voting exceptions. Trouble is, they've gone. The confirmation of Elena Kagan while interesting because she is only the fourth female SC justice in history, doesn't change the court's political direction.