After reading “Off Center” by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson for class, I was left with some thoughts that I would like to talk about in this response paper. I will be focusing on identifying an important, researchable issue that was not addressed in this reading. I believe that Hacker and Pierson do an excellent job of using detailed arguments and explanations for why the political party spectrum, and specifically the GOP, is off center. However, this book was written 10 years ago, and I believe that opinions and beliefs in our country, as well as current government official’s political party representation, show that ideologies are changing.
The authors make the argument that American voters are typically very middle-of-the-road, average, …show more content…
Hacker provides substantial evidence that shows that the GOP is very quickly becoming more and more conservative. He demonstrates this by comparing past presidencies, such as Reagan to Bush Jr., and congress voting behavior. He makes sure to point out that while Democrats, too, are shifting more to the left, it is nowhere near as rapid or strong of a shift as the Republicans. “The increase in the liberalism of House Democrats of roughly 28 percent still pales in comparison to the 73 percent increase in conservatism of House Republicans,” (p. …show more content…
Smaller candidates aside (Lincoln Chaffee and George Pataki), Donald Trump (1.5C) and Chris Christie (2.6C) are much closer to the center than the nearest Democratic candidate – Joe Biden (4.5L), and Biden hasn’t even officially joined the race.
Another interesting point is that the 7 Democratic candidates are all a bit more spread out and evenly spaced than the 14 Republican candidates. The Democratic candidates range from 8.7L (Sanders) to 0.7L (Chaffee), whereas the Republican candidates have a few outliers, and many of them are all clustered together around 5.0C. I’m not sure what this says, but maybe as the campaign continues and many of the republican candidates eventually drop out, the conservative end of the spectrum will appear more spaced out.
I was also very shocked to see that Trump’s score (1.5C) was so close to the center of the spectrum. I, and I would assume many other Americans, view Trump as a very extreme candidate. However, like Hacker says, there are only really polls for hot-button issues that the public is vested in, and that polls/surveys for minor issues that don’t have much public interest are often ignored. This idea could help explain Trump’s low conservative
The authors make the argument that American voters are typically very middle-of-the-road, average, …show more content…
Hacker provides substantial evidence that shows that the GOP is very quickly becoming more and more conservative. He demonstrates this by comparing past presidencies, such as Reagan to Bush Jr., and congress voting behavior. He makes sure to point out that while Democrats, too, are shifting more to the left, it is nowhere near as rapid or strong of a shift as the Republicans. “The increase in the liberalism of House Democrats of roughly 28 percent still pales in comparison to the 73 percent increase in conservatism of House Republicans,” (p. …show more content…
Smaller candidates aside (Lincoln Chaffee and George Pataki), Donald Trump (1.5C) and Chris Christie (2.6C) are much closer to the center than the nearest Democratic candidate – Joe Biden (4.5L), and Biden hasn’t even officially joined the race.
Another interesting point is that the 7 Democratic candidates are all a bit more spread out and evenly spaced than the 14 Republican candidates. The Democratic candidates range from 8.7L (Sanders) to 0.7L (Chaffee), whereas the Republican candidates have a few outliers, and many of them are all clustered together around 5.0C. I’m not sure what this says, but maybe as the campaign continues and many of the republican candidates eventually drop out, the conservative end of the spectrum will appear more spaced out.
I was also very shocked to see that Trump’s score (1.5C) was so close to the center of the spectrum. I, and I would assume many other Americans, view Trump as a very extreme candidate. However, like Hacker says, there are only really polls for hot-button issues that the public is vested in, and that polls/surveys for minor issues that don’t have much public interest are often ignored. This idea could help explain Trump’s low conservative