According to Politico, Barack Obama has worked hard to take over the Democratic National Committee. This is most clearly evident in the way that the DNC has embraced a portion of the expanded party that previously only had a direction connection to Obama's 2008 campaign. The RNC is engaged in it's own party building efforts.
With respect to the ongoing ambient factionalism that we've been talking about, Joshua Tucker argues that extremism within parties makes it harder to win general elections. Politico reports that these factions are "grass-roots energies that lawmakers and strategists can scarcely control." As previously discussed, the conservatives in the GOP are making Newt Gingrich out to be a moderate; something that most Democrats would probably find absurd.
Gingrich's core talent was finding Republicans that could win congressional seats. And remember, ultimately the face of the party is made up of the politicians who decide to run for office and right now some are arguing that the GOP is in a good position to recruit top tier talent.
Was this post a "tab dump?" Yeah, probably, but there is a lot of neat stuff going on in party politics right now – and only so many weeks left in the semester.
This is a class blog for the students of POLSCI 421: Party Politics in America at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
