290 Chapter 8Chapter 8 || Political PartiesPolitical Partieson immigration, as most favor current limits on legal immigration and some form of
legal status for undocumented individuals in the United States. It’s much harder to
determine a Republican candidate’s position, as candidates from that party have a wide
range of opinions and preferred immigration policies. Some favor policies close to the
Democratic Party norm, while others advocate sharply reducing legal immigration
and aggressive deportation efforts against the undocumented. Moreover, immigration
is not the exception. The simple fact is that on most issues, political parties in America
speak with many voices, not one.
Why don’t party leaders simply order their candidates to support the party platform or
to work together in campaigns? As we have discussed, party leaders actually have very little
power over candidates.^37 They can’t kick a candidate off the ballot, because candidates
win the nomination in a primary election or caucus, not through party appointment. Even
though parties have a lot of campaign money to dispense, their contributions typically
make up only a fraction of what a candidate spends on a campaign. And incumbent
candidates, who generally hold an advantage over challengers when seeking reelection,
are even less beholden to party leaders. Even if party leaders could somehow prevent an
incumbent from running for reelection, they would have to find another candidate to
take the incumbent’s place, which would mean losing the incumbent’s popularity and
reputation and reducing the party’s chances of holding the seat.Working Together in Office
After the election, political parties can improve democracy by helping officeholders
to find compromise policy proposals that attract broad support, and to select debate
and voting procedures that speed enactment of these proposals. Sometimes, finding
consensus both within and between parties is easy: for example, congressional
Republicans and Democrats united in August 2017 to enact an expansion of
educational benefits for military veterans. However, there are also many examples of
issues that can split a party wide open, such as immigration reform for Republicans.
Sometimes party members can compromise on their differences, as Republicans did
to enact tax reform in 2017, but on other issues compromise is all but impossible, as in
the case of Republicans’ immigration proposals. And of course, even if the members
of a party can find common ground, they may fail at building the bipartisan coalitions
that are often necessary to enact major legislation, as was the case for many proposals
considered during Donald Trump’s first two years in office, including immigration
reform, infrastructure funding, and cuts to entitlement programs. Even when
compromise is reached, the time spent negotiating means that members have less time
to scrutinize the details of budgets and policy proposals. For this reason, one recent
study argued that the party caucuses are “too weak to govern.”^38 Party leaders may do a
good job in determining what their colleagues want but be unable to persuade them to
support a proposal that they are inclined to oppose.
The fact that American political parties are ideologically diverse means that elected
members of the party may not agree on spending, policy, or anything else. And even
when senators and House members from a party find a way to bridge their differences,
there is no guarantee that the president, even if he or she is from the same party, will
agree to the compromise. In that sense, voters can’t expect that putting one party in
power will result in specific policy changes. Instead, policy outcomes depend on how
(and whether) individual officeholders from the party can resolve their differences.
Institutions such as the party caucuses or conferences provide a forum in which elected
officials can meet and seek common ground, but there is no guarantee that they will
find acceptable compromises.The most important part of
a Senate majority leader’s
education is over by the third
grade, when he has learned
to count.—Howard Baker, former Senate
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