Ideological divisions in the Texas House, Texas Senate and the Texas Delegation to the U.S. House

I'll post the graphics contained in these three articles later - all are by Rice's Mark Jones.

But if you want a description of ideological polarization in Texas, click on these.

- What Makes Texans in Washington different.
- The 2015 Texas Senate, from left to right.
- The 2015 Texas House, from left to right.

Washington's thoughts on political parties

This provides a good counterpoint to the previous posts. It's material 2305 students will run across in the section on political parties. The founders were concerned about the emergence of factors that might undermine the stability of the republic.

Washington thought the newly formed political parties were one of these factors. This concerns was a key part of his farewell address in 1796. It might be worth considering whether the results of the Pew survey make his point.

- Click here for the entire address.

Here are some outtakes:

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. . . .

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

More on the weakness of parties in Congress

At least that of the current Republican Party. The Democratic Party organization is quite string in comparison. It's getting to be quite the meme. Outside pressure groups have more influence on individual members than either the party, or their members. This author suggests that more partisanship would actually be beneficial. This suggests that Boehner's perceived weakness as Speaker is really the result of the influence of outside groups that are more influential to members of Congress - and have a greater ability to benefit their careers - than the traditional party leadership structure.

From the New Republic:

The current Democratic Party, which trims and disciplines the aspirations of its core progressive activists, is a good example of a fairly strong party, which is why it’s consistently frustrating to the left.

But the modern Republican Party is not strong. It’s something more like a loose association of independent forces, including Tea Party–backed members, those with their own sources of campaign money from ideological backers, many with seats so safe that they can happily ignore all their non-conservative constituents, and outside agents like Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, who Businessweek recently described as the de facto Speaker of the House. Many of its politicians have deliberately cut themselves off from all the incentives that traditionally moderate and stabilize politics—earmarks, constituent service (many offices say they won’t help constituents maneuver the ACA), and infrastructure spending. With safe seats, and hearing little dissent at home, they are able to do so. Cutting themselves off from the incentive to build and maintain a strong and viable party is part of the same story.

Consider the difference between House Speaker John Boehner and his shutdown forerunner, Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was a partisan in the original sense, and the first truly partisan Speaker. Although a conservative, he always had strong support from moderate Republicans because he cared about their party’s strength above all else. Many House Republicans felt they owed him their political careers, thanks to early support from his GOPAC. Following his own shutdown debacle, he was able to lead his party into a period of effective bargaining with the Clinton White House that included the budget deal of 1997. Boehner has no such capacity to manage or discipline his caucus, and that’s not mainly a reflection of his personal failings. No one owes him or the party anything. Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor could do no better.

The role of Senator Ted Cruz, who prodded the embers of the House shutdown gang even while he couldn’t do anything meaningful in his own chamber, exemplifies the undisciplined, loose association that the Republican Party has become. Backed by ideological donors including the Koch brothers, he has no need for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and his presidential aspirations are better off without the support of the party establishment. Like his almost-colleague DeMint, Cruz will likely endorse primary challengers to incumbents of his own party, something that was once almost unheard of in either party. That’s the opposite of putting party first.

The way money works in politics certainly has something, though not everything, to do with this splintering. SuperPACs, political non-profits, and other outside spenders do more than just bring the corrupting influence of corporations and wealthy individuals into the process. They also destabilize and decenter the process, replacing the long-term interests of the party with those of individual donors. The Campaign Finance Institute reported yesterday that outside groups outspent political action committees for the first time in 2012. We’ve seen a massive shift in electoral politics away from parties, candidates and formal groups like PACs, and toward outside groups; it should be no surprise that we are now seeing a similar shift in the base of power in legislative politics.

From Bloomberg: Jim DeMint, Congressional Republicans' Shadow Speaker

Bloomberg Businessweek argues that recently resigned Senator Jim DeMint - who now heads the Heritage Foundation - is the de facto Speaker of the House - or at least the guy who helps determine its agenda far more than John Boehner.

They describe how he developed the idea of using the continuing resolution process to defund Obamacare and has been pitching the idea for months. Many Republicans in Congress have been opposed to doing so, but DeMint appears ready to play hardball:

Many Republicans looked on in horror as the defund movement gained steam. If the government shuts down, polls suggest blame will fall most heavily on the GOP. North Carolina Senator Richard Burr calls DeMint’s plan “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” Representative Tom Cole, a veteran Oklahoma Republican, has likened the shutdown threat to “putting the gun to your own head. You’re basically saying, do what I want or I’ll shoot.” DeMint doesn’t see why his ploy should hurt Republicans. “Democrats will be shutting down the government to protect Obamacare,” he insists. As DeMint sees it, if Republicans would just toughen up and start singing from the same hymnal, public opinion might swing to their side. And if they won’t, he plans to turn his legions of supporters inside and outside of government against them.

The story highlights a growing division within the Republican Party, a fight over how to regain power, and suggests that the current level of dysfunction in Congress is due to this internal conflict:

When most Americans look at Washington, they see a broken Congress, riven by partisanship and lurching from crisis to crisis. While the hostility between Republicans and Democrats is indeed severe, it isn’t the real reason the engine of government keeps seizing up. What’s causing the malfunction is a battle within the GOP over how to return the party to its former glory after two consecutive losses to Obama and setbacks in the House and Senate. It’s a fight that pits uncompromising, Heritage-style conservatives against more cautious Republican elders. What makes it so contentious is that both sides have radically different—and mutually exclusive—ideas about how to move forward.

Boehner and his allies want to avoid direct confrontation. DeMint and company do not. DeMint also seems to be building one of the external organizations that may have more influence on the positions taken by Republican members of Congress than their elected leaders.

From Wonkblog: Why Boehner doesn’t just ditch the hard right?

Here's a good insiders look at the difficulty the Speaker is facing managing the Republican Caucus.

Party leaders don't have the tools they once had to build cohesion in their parties. External forces are gaining strength, which tempers the argument that parties are the dominant institution within Congress.

Key bit from the interview in the story I linked to above:

What we're seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power. It’s not so much about Boehner. It’s things like the end of earmarks. They move away from Tom DeLay and they think they're improving the House, but now they have nothing to offer their members. The outside groups don't always move votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members. And so many of these members now live in the conservative world of talk radio and tea party conventions and Fox News invitations. And so the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire. The members begin to believe they can achieve things in divided government that most objective observers would believe is impossible. Leaders are dealing with these expectations that wouldn't exist in a normal environment.

While a minority might be powerless in the US House of Representatives, it is not in the US Senate

A useful reminder by James Fallows.

In the House, a minority is indeed "largely powerless." Just ask Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, et al about how life has changed since 2010.

In the Senate, it's very different. There a minority is extremely powerful. Just ask Mitch McConnell, who has made 60 votes -- not a simple majority of 51 -- the de-facto minimum for getting either nominees or legislation approved.

Here's one way to think about it: in both the Senate and the House, the minority party has about the same proportional strength. The Republicans now have 46 Senate seats, obviously 46% of the total. And the 201 Democrats in the House are just over 46% of its makeup.

But in the House, those 46% might as well be 0%, since everything is run by majority vote. While in the Senate, 46% is a fully empowered blocking minority -- which can keep judgeships vacant, legislation from being approved, and essentially anything else from being done. That is, as long as they vote as a bloc, as they usually have; and are committed to making the filibuster not an emergency matter but a daily routine, as under McConnell they have done.

For members of Congress: fundraising beats out learning about policy

While we've been focusing on political ignorance among the general population, there's evidence of similar ignorance among members of Congress. What's more, there's a suggestion that this ignorance is tied into fundraising, specifically the amount of time members of Congress are expected to spend fundraising each day as opposed to learning about policy, or meeting with constituents.

A writer in Salon claims "Congress is awful because members spend all day long talking to rich people." Why? Because the costs of campaign today require that they do. The wealthy are more likely to provide the funds necessary to win the next election. Your everyday constituent cannot. Unfortunately this also helps prioritize who they speak to and whose concerns they are most attentive to. Which feeds the perception that Congress is not responsive to the needs of ordinary folks, which leads to lower opinions of Congress, more polarized politics, and an even more dysfunctional institution.

This slide leaked from a presentation made by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been circulating recently:



The Washington Post calls it the most depressing graph for members of Congress

"the dreary existence awaiting these new back-benchers." In particular note that they expect five hours out of every day to be devoted to fundraising (call time + strategic outreach).
One's future in the party is dependent on being a good fundraiser. Money talks after all.

South Dakota's Madville Times looks at their member of Congress and wonders how she is coping. We might do the same for Randy Weber.

From the Washington Post: Jim DeMint and the end of political parties

A Washington Post writer comments on an editorial by recently departed US Senator Jim Demint, who left the Senate to head the Heritage Foundation - a conservative think tank /' interest group.

He wonders if Demint's departure indicates a decline in the power of parties, and an increased tendency on the part of conservatives to look outside parties to push their agendas. This will be a useful addition to our discussion of dysfunction in Congress.

In an op-ed on the Post website now, DeMint seeks to explain himself and, in so doing, exposes a critically important point about the shifting power centers in politics.

DeMint writes:

“One lesson I learned in marketing is that, for consumers and voters, perception is reality…November’s election results and exit polls suggest that a majority of Americans agree that government does too much yet still voted for more of it. The election taught conservatives that we can no longer entrust political parties to carry our message.”

As we wrote at the time, DeMint’s decision to walk away from the Senate — long considered the pinnacle of power and influence in American politics — was, in and of itself, a potent symbol of the broader shift away from traditional political parties and toward outside interest groups.

And, DeMint’s opinion piece represents a broader sentiment within the conservative movement, that its establishment leaders simply lack the ability to point a way out of the political wilderness.

The rise of taxman (or, more accurately, anti-taxman) Grover Norquist and the ongoing power of radio talker Rush Limbaugh affirm that the power center of the GOP increasingly rests outside of its elected leaders. (That shrinking of establishment power was never more evident than when Speaker John Boehner was unable to find enough votes for his “Plan B” that would have exempted all but those making $1 million or more from a tax increase.)
He mentions Grover Norquist - who heads the Club for Growth, but he could also refer to the NRA and AIPAC among many other groups that seemingly define what is and is not possible in Congress beyond what the parties can do.

This raises an interesting research question. Are interest groups now more powerful than parties? Are we no longer in the age of party government and now in the age of interest group government. They've always been powerful of course, but generally because of their influence on parties. Have they dropped the pretext and now worked directly on individual members without regard to party?

Rep. Weber's Committees

On January 3, 2012 Randy Weber sent out a press release announcing that we had been placed on the Science, Space, and Technology and Foreign Affairs committees.

"I am very excited to be on both committees,” said Congressman-Elect Randy Weber. “NASA is a neighbor to my district, while UTMB and a number of science and research-based entities reside within Congressional District 14. I will be a strong advocate for each of them on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. The Foreign Affairs Committee will allow me the opportunity to champion our Nation and her able citizens, while learning more about the international issues impacting our borders.” Weber added, “I am looking forward to this opportunity to learn and grow on these committees and am grateful for the appointments given me.”


The decision on the Science, Space and Technology committee was made in mid December. Seven of the committees members in the 113th Congress will be from Texas, which gives the state some clout. Makes sense since the committee's jurisdiction includes the Johnson Space Center which is a major feature of the local economy. JSC is in the 14th District - so Weber's placement there makes perfect sense. No word right now on what subcommittees he will be on. A Texas Republican - Lamar Smith - will also chair the committee, taking over from another Texas Republican Ralph Hall.As if that is not enough - the ranking member - meaning the top Democrat - is also a Texan: Eddie Bernice Johnson.

From Texans on the Potomac:

The committee has strong impact on Texas and oversees NASA and research programs conducted in San Antonio at Southwest Research Institute, Texas Biomedical Research Institute, and the University of Texas Health Science Center.

“Clearly it’s an advantage,” said Louis DeSipio, professor of political science and Latino studies at the University of California Irvine. “What it will mean in practical terms is that when Congress gets around to allocating resources…Texas universities will be at an advantage. Larger Texas technology firms will be in a good position.”

FYI: Ralph Hall released a summary of the accomplishments of the committee during the 112th Congress.

Given the Houston area's position within internal markets - especially oil - Weber's appointment to the Foreign Affairs committee also makes sense. In addition, the committee allows for focus on border issues - illegal immigration and all that - which are important to his constituency.

The 14th District is a relatively safe one for Republicans. Now that he is an incumbent, there is little reason to think that he cannot hold onto this position as long as he likes. But being on these committees gives him enough opportunity to deal with the needs of constituents to be able to campaign effectively on that point. Republican leaders almost certainly took this into consideration when they made these appointments.

Looking down on the conspiracy

House Republicans who hoped to unseat Boehner as Speaker count the votes against him.

The NYT wonders why, since he has a vocal opposition to him already within his party, he wants the job. And there are lingering questions about whether he will be able to ensure the party works as a cohesive, unified forcer:

With his genial manner — and prodigious fund-raising efforts on behalf of fellow Republicans — Mr. Boehner has engendered considerable good will within his party. Though he lost the support of some of his fellow Republicans on Thursday, no one formally rose to challenge him.

“He’s personally well liked, and I think that’s important,” said Ross K. Baker, an expert in Congress at Rutgers University. “There haven’t been any coups mounted against Boehner, and I think that tells you something.”

But Mr. Boehner’s good-natured demeanor can sometimes work against him. As one House Democrat said, insisting on anonymity to avoid angering a leader, Republicans like him, but they do not fear him. The most difficult task for any speaker is to keep his party in line, a lesson that Mr. Boehner has learned the hard way.

“It’s a little bit like being the head caretaker of the cemetery,” said Representative Hal Rogers, the Kentucky Republican, describing the challenge Mr. Boehner faces. “There are a lot of people under you, but nobody listens.”

For Data Freaks

Which includes me - the final (as of yet) 2012 US House Popular Vote totals. In a spreadsheet no less.

The vote in each district is totalled and broken down by party.

As pointed out earlier, Democrats actually got more votes (1,362,351) than Republicans, but Republicans maintained their lead. The reason is argued to be gerrymandering. Republican success in the 2010 election - when they were able to control a large number of state legislatures and dominate the redistricting process following the 2010 census paid dividends. And it will continue to do so through the decade.

One study argues that Democrats would have to outperform Republicans by 7 percentage points in order to take contrrol of the House. This will certainly not happen in 2014, when Republican turnout will - if history continues to be a guide - overwhelm that of Democrats.

Also from xkcd: A history of the partisan and ideological makeup of the US Congress

You could teach an entire class out of this graphic. It would be worth getting hard copy of this.

More gridlock ahead?

Here's a projection - based on past data - that the incoming 113th Congress will be just as gridlocked as its immediate predecessor, the one dubbed by some as the worst Congress ever:

There has been much discussion of “the fundamentals” lately. Armed with knowledge of the economy and presidential approval, political scientists knew a few months ago that Obama had a (slightly) favorable chance of winning the election. Now that the excitement of the election is behind us and politicians face the task of governing, what might the fundamentals tell us about the next two years of lawmaking?

In the realm of congressional politics, the fundamentals I’m referring to are the configurations of legislators’ preferences required to break gridlock, per the theory laid out by Keith Krehbiel in Pivotal Politics and David Brady and Craig Volden in Revolving Gridlock. Breaking gridlock means having supermajorities sufficiently large enough to ignore a veto threat or to invoke cloture in the Senate. These requirements can be summarized graphically in the form of a gridlock interval—any proposal to move policy away from a position that lies within this interval can be expected lack the requisite supermajority coalition.

By looking at how elections affect these intervals, we can understand and form expectations about how productive Congress will be. The key is how the interval shifts and shrinks (or stretches) over time. The more of the previous interval that is “freed up” by the election (i.e., does not overlap the subsequent interval), the more productive we can expect Congress to be.

To see what we might expect over the next two years based on these fundamentals, I computed a projected gridlock interval for the 113th Congress (using Keith Poole’s NOMINATE scores and the technique I used to predict lawmaking following 2008 election) and plotted it along with the gridlock intervals for the 110th through the 112th Congresses (2007-2012) for comparison. The projected interval for the 113th is virtually identical to the interval for the 112th, so we can expect Congress to do…ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Study finds that the current crop of congressional Republicans are the most conservative in a century

There is empirical proof that the Republican Party has veered far to the right.

Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, with his collaborator Howard Rosenthal of New York University, has spent decades charting the ideological shifts and polarization of the political parties in Congress from the 18th century until now to get the view of how the political landscape has changed from 30,000 feet up. What they have found is that the Republican Party is the most conservative it has been a century.

Moderates have left Congress - or been replaced more accurately.

. . . this loss of moderates and further rightward movement by congressional Republicans would have been a challenge to navigate for even the biggest conservative hero of modern times, President Ronald Reagan. Poole said:

"Ronald Reagan was so successful because he made all these deals with these huge blocks of moderate legislators. That's why he had overwhelming majorities for the 81 tax cut, the 82 tax increase, where they had to go back and adjust the tax bill in 82 and the Social Security fix in 83. Then in 86 you had Simpson Mazzoli, which included amnesty and tax simplification. All that stuff passed with very large majorities. You cannot imagine anything like that happening now. Which is why the country is really in the tank.
"There's a lot of blame to go around. It doesn't look like there's any resolution of this anytime soon."

That said, Poole says the data are hard to deny; the polarization is largely due to how far and relatively quickly Republicans have shifted to the right end of the ideological spectrum.

And he blames poor leadership for the current inability to solve problems:

And he faults leaders of both parties for allowing the nation to get into a fiscal morass in which government spending on health care is unsustainable:

"It is true that the Republicans have moved further to the right than the Democrats have moved to the left. That's absolutely true.
"On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be much impetus on the part of the leadership of either political party to really do something serious about our budget crisis. I doubt very seriously we'll see much improvement.
"People forget how utterly irresponsible our political leadership has been for the last 30 years. ... The current political class of the U.S. just isn't in the same league as Truman and Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. You just don't have that kind of leadership now, just when we need it.

This isn't meant as a knock on Obama, Poole said. But he's not very optimistic about what an Obama second term would bring:

"The likely outcome of the election is that it's a very close victory by President Obama, the Republicans hold the House and may come within an eyelash of taking the Senate. I could see a 50-50 Senate. So good luck. After $2 billion gets spent on federal elections at all levels, how bitter will the atmosphere will be in January 2013? We're really up the creek."

House Partisanship From 1879 - 2010

More striking graphical evidence of the increase in party polarization since the 1970s - and fluctuations over time. Notice the shift in Southern Democrats especially - that's the story.


See: Polarized America for more detail.

Unfavorable Ratings for Both Major Parties Near Record Highs

From Nate Silver, commentary on the results of a new CNN poll on political parties:

A new CNN poll finds that 55 percent of voters have a negative view of the Republican Party, tied for their second-highest unfavorable score since CNN began asking this question in 1992. The Republicans also achieved a 55 percent unfavorable rating in a poll conducted in April 2009, although the party’s all-time high, 57 percent, was recorded as the House of Representatives was in the process of impeaching Bill Clinton in December, 1998.

The news for Democrats is not any better. Some 49 percent of voters now hold a negative view of the party, according to the poll. Although this figure is slightly better than for Republicans, it matches the Democrats’ record high unfavorable rating of September 2010 and is part of an upward trajectory that has persisted for the past three years.

The combined unfavorable score for both parties — 104 percent — is also a record, and represents the first time that the figure has been above 100.

Separation of Parties, Not Powers

Through Balikinization I found a link to a research paper which argues - plausibly - that the concept of separated powers is best understood today to operate between political parties not governing institutions, as Madison had intended it to. This actually blows apart the argument we make in 2301, based on Federalist #51, that the most important division in American government is between the branches and that the factor that keeps them separated is ambition. The authors suggest instead that:

. . . we live under a legal regime of separation of powers, overlaid on a political regime in which the real separation is of parties. Usually, one major implication of this gap is that legislatures are more inclined to constrain executive power when government is divided, and more inclined to cede power to an executive of the same party.

Checks and balances only work, as the founders intended, during periods of divided government and not during periods of unified government.

Senate Rules Changes on Debt Ceiling Votes Might Avert Default

The Constitution says nothing about a budgetting process - the dent ceiling included, so can always be modified, and is from time to time. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader, has proposed a change in order to avoid the looming default.

The story is detailed in the Washington Post and Politico, and it is a but complex, but it allows the president to submit to Congress a request to increase the debt ceiling. Congress can pass a "denial of request" which coudl then be vetoed by the president. Since it takes a 2/3rds vote to overide the veto. the president's own party can ensure it will not be overriden. This means the debt ceiling is raised, and there is a voting record showign who voted for it and who voted against it.

Obviously this fits within our 2302 discussion of the internal rules of Congress and how they change over time. Since this is driven be expedience (and this asumes the proposal passes), its worth wondering how many rules in Congress were the result of similar circumstances.

I like to make the point in our discussion of the executive that its increase in size occurred incrementally over time and generally in response to specific historical events and problems. Most recently, the Department of Homeland Security was created due to 9/11. Without that event, the department would not exist.

Are congressional procedures the accumulation of various decisions made to deal with ceratin political impasses? Might be a good study.  

Why the Republicans Resist Compromise

From Nate Silver at the NYT, more proof that Republicans are more and more conservative, but Democrats are primarily moderate. It explains the power of the Tea Party in the latter, but why the hard left lacks the same pull with the Democrats.

Dem Leadership Forces Weiner to Resign

Here's insider info on how the Democratic leadership forced Congressman Weiner to resign. It's helps us understand the relationship between party leaders and the rank and file.