Year: 2006
Type: book-review
Abstract: In this book political scientist Barbara Sinclair examines how the ideological gulf now separating the two major parties developed and how today's intense partisan competition affects the political process, lawmaking and national policy.She notes the atmosphere in contemporary Washington is intensely partisan and highly conflictual.Congressional Republicans are more uniformly conservative and Democrats more uniformly moderate and liberal than at any time during the past half century; the result is that most important policy and political fights pit most Democrats against more Republicans.Combine that with narrow margins of party control, and the result is highly polarized and often highly charged and even antagonistic, politics.Sinclair provides the reader numerous historical as well as current examples to emphasize the material.For example, former Speaker Sam Rayburn used to instruct new members on his prescription for success: to get along, go along.Fast forward to the 1990s, the cocoon of good feeling had been replaced by overt partisan hostility.How did the congressional parties of the Raybum-McCormack-Albcrt era -the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s -become over the course of one generation, less than three decades, the congressional parties ofNewt Gingrich and Tom DeLay?
Source: Oklahoma politics
Author: Carolyn Taylor
Institution: Rogers State University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1505836390