Summing Up

If there were ever a time in the past 200 years that an Independent candidate could win the presidency, it’s now.

Now is the time to show the political establishment that, this time around, Americans are not going to be manipulated by fear. Now is the time to vote for hope and a… pic.twitter.com/uqXDMBE8r0

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 30, 2024

More on the AIP

Rural voters

I wondered what issue could tie together the threads of this course.

The answer came two years ago.

Parties are networks that exist on 4 levels.

• PIE -- party in the electorate
• PO -- party organization
• PIG -- party in government
• POG -- partisan outside groups

Abortion and party in government

Roll Call on HR 6914.

Alito

• From 1981 to 1985,  Assistant to U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee -- father of Sen. Mike Lee.
• From 1985-1987, Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Charles J. Cooper in the Office of Legal Counsel during the tenure of Attorney General Edwin Meese.  SEE HIS JOB APPLICATION
• From 1987 to 1990, United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Abortion and partisan outside groups

• All five have been members of the Federalist Society.
• Amici

Abortion and party organization

• NRSC talking points
• DSCC release

Abortion and party in the electorate

 Former Rep. Tony Hall (D-OH): "Take care of your district first or you can't do world hunger."

Summing Up I

No reflection emails this week.

PLEASE COMPLETE COURSE EVALUATIONS.

POGs and the Think Tank Sector

• Problems of conservative think tanks and one in particular
• Problems of liberal and establishment think tanks

National party organizations are weak in certain ways but PIE partisanship is strong.

Hershey (p. 370):  "Why should partisanship help citizens who have so many other sources of information about candidates and issues?  Perhaps it is because they are exposed to so much information."

Edmund Burke on PIG:

In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

Trends in PIE 

Youth

Hispanic population and voting behavior