Political Parties- Blog Post #3

In Democracy, the utmost importance is that the people are given a voice in their politics. Although individuals may not possess the power to make a difference, a key feature of American government that helps the people is linkage institutions. Linkage institutions help connect the people to their government, and the most prevalent example of this in America is political parties. By giving the people different platforms to choose from that contain different beliefs and ideals, Americans can choose politicians in their party to support during elections. This linkage institution is important because in a Representative Democracy, we elect people to make decisions in our government, and political parties give the people a narrower spectrum of officials that they can elect based off of who they think will stand for their cause.

The political party I am choosing to write about is the Republican Party, or the Grand Old Party (GOP). This party is classified as Conservative, meaning that they prefer traditional values and smaller government.

Some of the main elements of their platform are:

Nationalism: they believe that as the “greatest nation” the people should be served by the government. Foreign affairs are encouraged, but only when it does not pose a threat to our country.The government should focus less control on individuals education, businesses, and religion, and more on protecting our country.

The GOP’s views of politics is similar to that of the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party, because they believe that traditional, Constitutional rights should dictate what power the federal government assumes, and that the rest should be left to state governments. Their views vary most significantly from those of the Democratic Party, which counters most of their basic beliefs. The Democratic Party is biased against the pro-smaller government ideal that the GOP exercises. Instead of directly following the rights stated in the Constitution, members of this party believe that the Constitution offers room for compromise, and gives the power to the federal government. These parties are the two main political parties/ linkage institutions, because they have the highest number of supporters out of any other parties. More liberal voters conform with Democrats, and conservative voters back the GOP.  Politicians and civilians who are part of the Democratic Party are also more forward thinking on social issues, such as gay marriage, abortion, and gender equality. Seeing as they are more proactive than the GOP, which opts for tradition, Democrats challenge the current social status and want to change America's ideals, instead of keeping them like the GOP wants.

I chose to make the Grand Old Party the focus of my blog this week because currently in America, our government is predominantly Conservatives who align themselves with this party. Although I am a Democrat, I think that is is important for me to gain perspective on the GOP, to understand how they wish to shape our country for the next few years with President Trump in office.

(from https://aclpo.wordpress.com/ and pinterest.com)

These pictures both highlight the beliefs that the GOP has about schooling. Regarding education, they believe that parents are the most influential on their children, and should have control over what their child learns. Because of this, private schooling is desired by many people in the GOP, because it offers more choices. They also view this from an economic standpoint, because less tax dollars would be going towards public schools, and they would be spending money on the quality of education that is "best" for their children. The picture on the left describes these ideals, by saying that schooling should decided by the parents, and that they deserve to pay for only a high standard of education for their children. The picture on the right emphasizes how private schooling is catered to the child, as opposed to the "one size fits all" curriculum that is supposedly presented in public education. If someone were to look into why school choice is important to Republicans, these artifacts would show them how the GOP cares about providing the best quality of schooling to future generations. They would also see that the opinions of parent's are very important to the GOP, because they are urging parent's to make choices for their children that would be in their best interest.