In the United States, politics function within a framework of a constitutional federal republic and presidential system, with three distinct branches that share powers: the U.S. Congress which forms the legislative branch, a bicameral legislative body comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate; the executive branch, which is headed by the president of the United States, who serves as the country's head of state and government; and the judicial branch, composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and which exercises judicial power.
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. The Republican Party today comprises diverse ideologies and factions, including centrist and right-libertarian factions, but conservatism is the party's majority ideology.
Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district serving north Atlanta and nearby areas from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. In 2012, Gingrich unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
Nonpartisan democracy is a system of representative government or organization such that universal and periodic elections take place without reference to political parties. Sometimes electioneering and even speaking about candidates may be discouraged, so as not to prejudice others' decisions or create a contentious atmosphere.
Kevin Price Phillips is an American writer and commentator on politics, economics, and history. Formerly a Republican Party strategist before becoming an independent, Phillips became disaffected with the party from the 1990s, and became a critic. He is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Harper's Magazine, and National Public Radio, and was a political analyst on PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers.
Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. He primarily studies and speaks on elections in the United States, campaign finance reform, Senate and filibuster reform, Congress, redistricting, and political polarization.
Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes.
Eugene Joseph Dionne Jr. (2) is an American journalist, political commentator, and long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at the McCourt School of Public Policy of Georgetown University, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator.
The U.S. House Committee on Ethics, often known simply as the Ethics Committee, is one of the committees of the United States House of Representatives. Prior to the 112th Congress it was known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users or SAFETEA-LU was a funding and authorization bill that governed United States federal surface transportation spending. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 10, 2005, as Pub. L. 109–59 (text)(PDF) and 119 Stat. 1144.
In politics, gridlock or deadlock or political stalemate is a situation when there is difficulty passing laws that satisfy the needs of the people. A government is gridlocked when the ratio between bills passed and the agenda of the legislature decreases. Gridlock can occur when two legislative houses, or the executive branch and the legislature are controlled by different political parties, or otherwise cannot agree.
Norman Jay Ornstein is an American political scientist and an Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington, D.C., conservative think tank. He is the co-author of It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.
A partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is used for persons who strongly support their party's policies and are reluctant to compromise with political opponents.
A nonpartisan blanket primary is a primary election in which all candidates for the same elected office run against each other at once, regardless of the political party. Partisan elections are, on the other hand, segregated by political party. Nonpartisan blanket primaries are slightly different from most other elections systems with two-rounds/runoff, aka "jungle primaries" , in a few ways. The first round of a nonpartisan blanket primary is officially the "primary." Round two is the "general election." Round two must be held, even if one candidate receives a majority in the first round.
"Wingnut", wing nut or wing-nut, is a pejorative American political term referring to a person who holds extreme, and often irrational, political views.
American Feud: A History of Conservatives and Liberals is a 2017 documentary originally released in 2008 by Richard Hall and Simone Fary. The documentary takes a non partisan look at the history of liberalism and conservatism in the United States since the 1890s progressive era.
Justin A. Amash is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Michigan's 3rd congressional district from 2011 to 2021. He was the first Palestinian-American member of Congress. Originally a Republican, Amash left the GOP and became an independent on the 4th of July in 2019. In April 2020 he joined the Libertarian Party, leaving Congress in January 2021 as the only Libertarian to serve in Congress.
The 2022 United States Senate election in North Dakota was held on November 8, 2022, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of North Dakota. Incumbent Republican John Hoeven was first elected in 2010 with 76% of the vote to succeed retiring Democratic–NPL incumbent Byron Dorgan, and won re-election in 2016 with 78.5% of the vote. He ran for a re-election to a third term in office against Democratic-NPL nominee Katrina Christiansen.
Why We're Polarized is a 2020 non-fiction book by American journalist Ezra Klein, in which the author analyzes political polarization in the United States. Focusing in particular on the growing polarization between the major political parties in the United States, the author argues that a combination of good intentions gone wrong, such as dealing with an arguably more unjust political consensus maintained at the expense of minorities, and inherent glitches in the institutional design of the country's federal government have caused widespread social problems.
Political polarization is a prominent component of politics in the United States. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization, both of which are apparent in the United States. In the last few decades, the U.S. has experienced a greater surge in ideological polarization and affective polarization than comparable democracies.
