In US politics, they have a two party system which consists of the Democrats and the Republicans. At the birth of the Republican Party, the two parties worked closely to each other apart from big issues such as slavery. For almost a century and a half, the two parties have started to be very distinct from one another; one of the reasons could be due to the growth in population of the country. Immigration from Latin America have flooded in so much that it has been predicted that by 2050 there will no longer be a white-majority in America.
The two major parties are widely known to be precisely distinct from one another due to the Democrat’s liberal view and the Republican’s conservative view. From their basic beliefs such as: abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control, they are completely on the other side of the world from each other. Republicans are opposed to abortion as they call it “murder of the fetus” whereas the Democrats support the right of abortion as they argue it is women’s right to make decisions about their own bodies; this is called pro-choice stance. The Republicans are also opposed to same-sex marriages, however the Democrats have a more liberal approach and support same-sex marriages and they want to legalize it. Barak Obama was the first America President to publically support same-sex marriage.
Even so, bipartisan events such as the McCain-Feingold Act within US politics history may support the idea of the two major parties being not so much distinct from each other as they can come together on a compromise and work together. Democratic Senator Russell Feingold and Republican Senator John McCain were both supporters of campaign finance reform. Due to their bipartisan teamwork and support, they were able to change how donations could be used to support political parties. However, this can be argued that it is nothing to do with their policies within how to govern their country, but this just affects campaigns, therefore not making it a valid point to how the two major parties are similar.
Economic ideas would be another element from the two major parties that are entirely distinct from each other. The Republicans believe that the people should be more self-reliant, if they were to be so, and then there would be a small role for government. When government having a small role, this would also mean that there will be a reduction in taxes, which leaves the people with more money. As people have more money, businesses are able to grow and creating more jobs. Issues such as global warming and dealing with it will only hurt businesses; they are therefore very sceptical about global warming actually happening. On the other hand, Democrats believe that central government should have a significant role as they are able to solve many big problems such as; poverty, improving education and healthcare and unemployment. To solve these big problems, they must collect taxes to be able to fund the programmes, yet this process also involves employing people, therefore they are also creating jobs too.
Recent activities from Presidents such as Clinton, has shown something different. Although he was a Democrat, his movements and decisions made the public consider him to have had move back to the centre rather than maintaining his Democrat place. This therefore put the two major parties ideologies into question as under President Clinton, he also signed the Republican Congress’s welfare reform bill in 1995; this may have just been a bipartisan support but it still shows that there are policies such as the welfare reform bill where the two major parties share the same ideas. In addition, under President Bush (Republican) there were many of his activities that can be seen as Democratic more than Republican which he was criticized heavily for this. One of the Republican’s policies would be for the states to have more power rather than the federal government. On the contrary, under President Bush, he had signed many expensive federal government programmes. Examples of this would be the over $500 billion prescription drug benefit,
Medicare in 2003 and the TARP program in 2008.
While previous US presidents in the last decade have done activities for there to not be a clear distinction between the two major parties, President Obama has. One of the Democrats beliefs is that they believe the US should help out in the international arena with strong alliances; with this President Obama has doubled the troops in Afghanistan. While back in the US, he has also failed a number of liberal causes that has caused massive debates in the US. An example of this would be the Affordable Care Act; although it is currently known to be running smoothly with over a million applications and members, at first it was a bumpy road and was criticized heavily due to it. One other example would be the budget agreement in October 2013 that was not met in time which caused the first government shutdown since under President Clinton in 1995 which lasted for 21 days. To prevent the government from having another shutdown again, recently President Obama has signed a bipartisan budget bill that will be carried out for the next two years.
To conclude, the two major parties have many elements and policies that distinct the two at a large margin. Examples such as the October 2013 Government shutdown would show this as they would go into extreme measurements for their policies. There are events where bipartisan support would need to be shown for the sake of the people, however this is mainly on a political level such as campaign finance and for that to be sorted and out of the way would keep a steady election year which will not put the people of from voting.
