http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/02/10/political-parties-%E2%80%98must-embrace-technology%E2%80%99.html

This article is called "Political parties must embrace technology." I thought it went along with this weeks topics of technology and candidates. It talks about the increasing number of people using the internet and other technological sources. It then talks about the candidates having to use this as well to be more effective in campaigning.Check it out!!

What Happened In 2008?
As I was searching though McCain and Obama’s web-sites there wasn’t really that much information anymore. In McCain’s was a thanks for your support message and in Obama’s not much at all. Since the elections have ended so have the sites as well.
From our readings this week it focused a lot on candidates and their vulnerability of incumbents. Incumbents tend to be not so safe after all when it comes to elections. 2008 was Bush’s last year in office so there was no possibility of him returning to office. Many people wanted change because of the current situation with the economy among a lot of other issues. There seemed to be no chance that the Republicans would win in 2008. Democrats also had a leg up on the Republicans seeing that they run Congress.
As for party centeredness and campaigns the goal is to win elections. Each candidate can be associated with a political party, but when it comes to campaigning the idea is to win and party affiliation seems to take a seat on the back burner. I’m not saying affiliation is ignored, but what comes out of the candidate is how far left or right they are in their ideals.
As far as technology goes, this to me benefits the candidate and not so much the party. With these advances, such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogging, the campaigns in my opinion become candidate-centered. With these advances candidates are able to make it all about themselves. Also with new technology a trillion news stations and on-line sites are able to pick and choose who they wish to support as well as bash.
In conclusion, it’s hard to say if technology is useful in campaigns. I feel that if it is targeted at the right groups then it can be. It’s clear however that candidate’ campaigns are centered around just that- CANDIDATES, and parties take the back seat during elections.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/foreclosure.plan/index.html

This article has to do with the Republican analyzing and questioning the plan that Obama has presented for the economy. This goes to show how the parties are going head to head with one another on issues that each party feels strongly about. The economy is definately in a jam, but Republicans are skeptical of the stance the Democrats have taken on the issue and since coming into office.

Primaries have been said to be an effective way in which candidates are chosen for president and vice president. Each state has control over what type of primary they use whether it be open, closed, non-partisan, run-off, or in the past blanket primaries. Even though there are many ways in which parties pick candidates, primaries still pose some problems. An example is from our book on p.75, it states that primaries do not help with competition. Incumbents also are rarely ever defeated in elections. One of the biggest components of elections is finances. This aspect tends to either make or break a candidate and their campaign.
Looking at the regulation of campaign finance, there are many concerns. The first is that the cost of running a campaign has risen so much that some candidates are seriously hurt to point that makes it impossible for them to run. The rising costs of campaigns also only lets the voters see the candidates and parties with large amounts of money. This could possibly be the reason why our country only has two major political parties. They have become so large and rich that there is no possible way for other candidates to come in and compete.
In some ways I feel that the regulations of money to campaigns are a good thing. There needs to be some sort of contribution limits otherwise there would be even less competition among parties. Also having restrictions helps prevent corruption and candidates from getting money illegally. As far as parties go the restrictions on them make them have to go out and work for the contributions and this I feel makes them stronger as a party. Parties have to work together to get voters to contribute.
In conclusion money matters in elections and it needs to be regulated. If it is not there is the possibility of corruption as well as a decrease in political competitiveness.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801403.html

This article is called "Political Parties, Under Challenge, Seems to have Justices' Sympathy." This article goes right along with this weeks readings. It talks about cases being brought to the Supreme Court and for political parties to be able to select their own nominees. It talks abaout the "blanket primary" and why it was unconstutional as well what Supreme Court judges said about this particular subject.

To start out, decentralizationeffects political parties in a number of ways. First off decentralization creates the parties. Without government decentralizing there wouldn't be distributed power to states or institutions. Decentralization allows individuals to coordinate with one another. This coordination and cooperation of these people help form political parties. The political parties are made up of individuals who share similar goals which primarily is to win elections and get their party voted into office.

As for party discipline this is difficult because across state boundaries each state has different view points such as a state being Republican and then switching over to being more Democratic. Decentralization is also a challenge for parties because they vary across the board. For example from our module video Professor Tofias mentions how different Mitt Romney and Mike Huckaby are, yet both are part of the Repblican Party.

For heterogeniety, decentralization is logical because our country is large as well as diverse therefore we need large and diverse parties. Because of the diversity in large parties this causes disparity across the major political parties.

Obviously when Bush was in office the government was run by the Republican Party. As the elections approached people were very dissatisfed with Bush and his administration. The elections in the past have been close, but this one was not. The states that were normally battleground states this time around had shifted. They had shifted to the Democratic Party. This goes to show that decentralization helps politicla parties change and evolve from year to year, election to election.

So we will just have to see where the economy takes us and where the newly in office Democratic Party leads.

Party Article

This is an interesting article talking about the shape of the Republican party since the elections!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2009/02/nj-gov_could_republicans_final.html

What is a party?

As discussed in module 1 the questions of if parties are representative of our preferences or if they are institutions that help translate preferences really helped me answer what a political party is. I feel that I feel that political parties do represent our, and by our I mean citizens, preferences on issues. Also I feel that political parties do translate our preferences. I guess in a political party this would be the busy aspect and the actual work part of a party.

One good way to explain a political party I feel was in the Federalist No. 10. I think that a party is a united group of people "acutuated by some common impulse of passion or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." Political parties are used to maintain power in the government and help maintain order.

A political party I feel also has to deal with certain ideologies which also goes along I guess with the passions and interests of citizens. Political parties compete for power with one another which is what they need to do to survive and is an important feature for parties to exist.

A political party to me is a group of individuals that get together for a specific cause which has to do with political preference and certain ideologies. Interest groups are not political parties, but however they sometimes work closey with them in order to get legislation passed.

I would like to start off by telling you all a little about myself. My name is Naomi Pena. I am 23 years old and was born and raised in Milwaukee. Alot of people usually are negative about Milwaukee, but to tell you the truth I love it here!!!!! Except for -30 degree below zero wind chills and 20+ inches of snow. I am a senior here at UWM and will graduate in May. I have a 5 year old little boy named Devin and a fiance named Brent. We are tying the knot June 13th 2009 :)

Enough about me and on to the course material. I hope to learn a great deal about parties and how they operate in this course. I hope to explore not only parties on an individual level, but how they interact with one another. I have recently become more interested in party poltics since the elections. I am curious to explore how events such as elections affect political parties and how they come to into power.

As far as fears goes I don't really know that I have any real fear, but a lot of curiosity surrounding parties. I guess I am curious to know why can't parties just be one big happy family and get along? I guess that could be a reason for our country being as successful as if has been. There needs to be some sort of balance in countries and I guess that parties are a way to maintain peace within.

I look forward to this class and learning about parties. I also look forward to reading all of your blogs and op