Congress procedure and the Republican Party

I just came across another great article from RollingStone Magazine - this time it concentrates on the inner workings of the Republican Party. Although probably more for political obsessives than G & P students it does contain some great nuggets.

I thought it was worth a separate post because it discusses representation in the House, and it uses as an example a House Representative from the Tea Party wing of the Republican party, Justin Amash:

Rep. Justin Amash.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

He has a wide following on social media, which he uses to communicate directly with his constituents, explaining every vote he casts, in detail, on his Facebook page. Mostly, Amash votes no – including 136 times against the Republican Party line. Visiting the congressman that afternoon in his office – decorated with a framed poster of Ayn Rand – I ask him how he can so casually defy leadership. "Why be for leadership?" Amash asks. "It's more popular in your district to be against leadership. Better just to vote your constituency."

 Great for using as an example in Unit 4C when discussing Congressional representation.

The article also discusses at length the how the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has essentially taken over, by creating a separate group in Congress it calls the Republican Study Committee, which has 174 of 232 House Republicans. This is the group who is apparently running the show when it comes to the current budget crisis.

Specifically this would be a useful example when discussing the different factions of the two political parties.

The article also goes on to describe how otherwise loyal republicans are now branded "RINOS" (Republicans in Name Only), even if they have been given a 97% loyal rating by the American Conservatives Union - the example given is House Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions.

A final area which G & P students should find useful is how the removal of "pork barrel" spending (a subject of a 15-mark question in Unit 4C) has meant that the leadership of the parties (or specifically in this case the Republicans) have much less leverage over their members.

Few!

13 Reasons why the US government isn't working

Fig 1 - Filibusters and Cloture motions 1917-2012.
Source - washingtonpost.com

I've just come across this article in the Washington Post. It details 13 reasons the US government isn't working. 

Although a round-up of the usual suspects, it is a pretty useful run-down of a variety of causes, including the polarization of the political parties (the graph below shows this pretty well), the Tea Party, gerrymandering in the House and the filibuster.

The conclusion it comes to is pretty startling, but on the whole, a very useful article for anyone contemplating the US government, Congress and the power of the President in unit 4C.

Fig 2 - Average party political position
Source - washingtonpost.com

In a long article in the New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew discusses the impact that low turnout has had on US politics - the short version is that it has encouraged the extremist wings of the parties to get out the vote and this in turn has made the political system more polarized. It does have some extraordinary tales of political skulduggery, but in general it has some of the same thrust as the earlier post in the Washington Post.

Esteemed economist Paul Krugman in the Washington Post describes the Republican Party "incompetence", and links to a review of a book by Mann and Ornstein called "It's even worse than it looks". G & P students may have come across the idea of Congress as "the Broken Branch" - these are the two authors who came up with the phrase. They have some very unpleasant things to say about the Republicans:

Today’s Republicans in Congress behave like a parliamentary party in a British-style parliament, a winner-take-all system. But a parliamentary party — “ideologically polarized, internally unified, vehemently oppositional” — doesn’t work in a “separation-of-powers system that makes it extremely difficult for majorities to work their will.”

Food for thought, and probably essential reading for the 2013 exams.

Update - 10th October 2013

RollingStone Magazine has published a very long article putting the current division between political parties into historical context. Essential reading for anyone contemplating the different party positions for Unit 3C, and because it explains some of the finer points of the debt crisis.

US government shut-down

Well, the big news is that the US government has shut down because the two chambers of Congress could not come up with a solution to the budget problems that satisfied everybody.

Picture source: The Economist. 

The argument essentially was that the Republicans (or even more specifically the Tea-Party wing) wanted to delay, or overturn or defund Obamacare, and the Democrats said they couldn't.

There are a whole lot of different topics in G & P units 3C and 4C which could use this event as an example; the power (or inadequacy) of Congress, the power of the President, Political parties and their factions, not to mention the Supreme Court which upheld Obamacare in the face of challenges to it.

Interesting commentary from the Republican-leaning Washington Post which blames the Tea Party for having no grasp of political reality. Elsewhere on the Washington Post web-site there is older analysis which says that this plays into the hands of the Democrats and President Obama, as does this post.

The Economist's Democracy in America blog has a piece here about the political implications of the shut-down.

The BBC's Robert Peston has analysis of the economic impact of this.

Update:

The Huffington Post has a poll of polls which says that thanks to the Government shut-down the Republican Party is losing support and is in danger of losing the House in the Mid-terms next year. This may or may not have an impact on the shut-down itself; the Republican Party may decide to suspend the shut-down or it may decide to keep squeezing.

The decision on the debt ceiling will have to be made by 17th October or there is a risk that the US government will default on its debt.

Wikipedia's article on the subject can be found here.