Party Organization II

For Monday, read Hershey, ch. 12: Wed. readings will be on Sakai.

Questions on the assignment?

National Committees

DNC and RNC

Hill Committees

DCCC and NRCC

DSCC and NRSC

1990: NRCC v. RNC

The 527 Groups 

• RGA: Republican Governors Association
• DGA: Democratic Governors Association
• RAGA: Republican Attorneys General Association
• DAGA: Democratic Attorneys General Association
• RSLC:  Republican State Leadership Committee 
• DLCC: Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

Incentives for Activism

• Material: traditional party organization
• Solidary: social connections
• Purposive:  issues and ideologies

Voter turnout and duty

My generation v. yours

Voter demographics  

Most people do not engage beyond talking and voting

Young adults

• Civic activism
• Engagement on issues such as climate change
• Skepticism about parties

Prags v. Purists:  Polarization means activism

Clear statement of transactional relationship (at 2:00)

Jesus and John Wayne

Getting Religion from Politics:

At the same time, their priorities have begun to shift. Dr. Burge pointed to an analysis of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study he’d conducted, in which white evangelicals ranked political issues by importance. Same-sex marriage — once a point of bitter contention between white evangelicals and some of their moderate Republican allies — came in last, after jobs, crime, gun control and a variety of other matters. Abortion, too, came in surprisingly low on white evangelicals’ ranking of priorities — underneath, for example, immigration. According to Mr. Smith, Pew found this year that “81 percent of white evangelical Protestants said that the economy would be a very important issue in making their decision about who to vote for in the 2020 presidential election, while 61 percent said the same about abortion.” In 2016, he added, a similar finding also held.

“I think what happened was, over time, white evangelical orthodoxy on politics sort of just melded into Republican orthodoxy, and there’s no difference anymore,” Dr. Burge told me. “We used to always believe that religion was the first cause and then politics was downstream of religion,” but newer studies suggest that “those two lenses have switched places now and that partisanship is the first cause and now religion is downstream of partisanship.”