The 2022 elections further depleted the ranks of elected officials associated with “Never Trump,” the informal network of Republicans and conservatives opposed to Donald Trump and his movement. Never ...Trumpers retain a prominent presence in traditional media and some elite-level conservative institutions. And they can point to a notable minority among the voting public that shares its general outlook. However, the highly publicized defeats and hasty retirements of many of those who supported Trump’s impeachment have left the Never Trumpers with very few standard bearers among active Republican politicians. Many of those most closely associated with the network are happy to have left behind a party they now see as irredeemable. Yet one tension confronting the Never Trumpers is that, as they themselves often caution, a healthy two-party system requires that both parties abide by certain basic rules and norms. But if that is the case, and if the Never Trumpers are not going to lead the fight to restore a more responsible Republican party, who will?
This book examines major foreign conflicts from the Spanish-American War through Vietnam, arguing that international conflicts have strong effects on American political parties, elections, state ...development, and policymaking. First, major wars expose and highlight problems requiring governmental solutions or necessitating emergency action. Second, despite well-known curtailments of civil liberties, wars often enhance democracy by drawing attention to the contributions of previously marginalized groups and facilitating the extension of fuller citizenship rights to them. Finally, wars affect the party system. Foreign conflicts create crises - many of which are unanticipated - that require immediate attention, supplant prior issues on the policy agenda, and engender shifts in party ideology. These new issues and redefinitions of party ideology frequently influence elections by shaping both elite and mass behavior.
Impassioned calls for reforming the intelligence process in U.S. foreign policy routinely follow on the heels of high-profile intelligence failures in which the intelligence community or the ...government as a whole is caught by surprise. These failures are blamed on inadequate warning grounded in organizational, psychological, and informational weaknesses in the intelligence process, as in Pearl Harbor or the failure to “connect the dots” before the 11 September 2001 attacks. The reforms that follow usually attempt to reorganize agencies and processes by improving the speed, amount, and accuracy of intelligence information provided to politicians, particularly the president. Yet these reforms often fail.
Long-term care is a serious but largely unrecognized problem in the US. The CLASS Act was a new program embedded within the Affordable Care Act that was supposed to bring relief to disabled ...individuals and Medicaid, the primary payer for long-term care. However, the program had an unworkable design, and it was eventually abandoned by the Obama administration. CLASS’ flaws were largely the product of a policy area in which ignorance and misinformation render any effective and fiscally sound program politically unfeasible. As such, the rise and fall of the CLASS Act highlights the profound challenges facing any attempt to pass serious long-term care reform and underscores the need to raise awareness of America’s long-term care challenge.
Realignment theory has long offered the primary framework for understanding American political history, particularly as it relates to the party system. The “System of 1896” is central to the theory ...and holds that William McKinley’s victory in that year ushered in a Republican-dominated era lasting until Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932. The 10 years of partial—and six years of total—Democratic control of Congress and the White House (1910–20) during this 36-year stretch (1896–1932) remains an anomaly among realignment theorists. I conduct content analyses of Democratic and Republican party documents and media commentary and find that World War I played a crucial role in the GOP’s resurgence in 1920. This conclusion highlights realignment theory’s failure to account for the important role of international events and contingency in general.
Less than two years ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as president amidst proclamations of a partisan realignment. But in this falls midterms, scores of his fellow Democrats lost their jobs. The best ...evidence suggests that Obamas signature accomplishmentpassage of a healthcare reform bill that had long eluded progressivesplayed a key role in the historic defeat. It also highlighted the delicacy of partisan regimes, particularly those prematurely designated as realignments by academic or popular observers.
William McKinley's important role in the development of the rhetorical presidency has been underappreciated. Based on his speeches during a fall 1898 tour and contemporaneous newspaper reports, this ...article argues that McKinley discussed controversial policy issues, attempted to sway public opinion, and engaged in partisan campaigning. These findings offer new evidence that contradicts Jeffrey K. Tulis's claim that chief executives avoided such activity until Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson—embracing Progressive ideology—transformed the presidency into a more visible and popular institution rooted in public speaking. McKinley's rhetorical behavior is not fatal to Tulis's thesis, but it does suggest that McKinley belongs in the "middle way" category.
... we tend to connect wars with miscarriages of justice like Japanese internment during World War II or, more recently, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Captions on posters openly acknowledged the ...relationship between war and gender equity by proclaiming women to be "Our Second Line of Defense" and offering slogans such as "The Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun" and "Our Boys Need Sox, Knit Your Bit" alongside images of women at work. Beyond military policy, the repeal of "Don't Ask" is important for the larger gay rights agenda, just as African American service in World War II and Korea helped shape the evolving civil rights movement.
Foreign Affairs and the 2008 Election Saldin, Robert P
The forum : a journal of applied research in contemporary politics,
1/2009, Volume:
6, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Much of the commentary in the wake of last month's presidential election has focused on the magnitude and historic aspects of Barack Obama's victory and the deteriorating economic environment in ...which it played out. Little thought has been given to the influence of foreign affairs in the election. Yet even in this year's contest, which appears to lend considerable support to economic-based theories of elections, international events clearly played an important role by shaping the nomination process for both major parties and in Obama's selection of Joseph Biden as his running mate.
The United States is currently in the midst of a war in Iraq and a broader “war on terror.” What will be the long-term consequences of these conflicts on the American state?
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