Political Parties through the Lens of De Tocqueville, Part 3

This is part 3 of a reposting of a paper I wrote in the Spring of 2008 for Jon McFall's Democratic Political Philsophy class at Rutgers University. Certain points have been redacted for clarity, and will be noted with a *

The main issue is: which party tends to enact faith based or religious legislation? In most cases, this honor goes to the Republicans. And while Republicans have an obligation to their religious constituents to further a religious agenda, it still does not factor in many new challenges that Tocqueville did not anticipate, such as the rise and relative acceptance of atheism prevalent in current times. 
In addition, legislating morality should not happen in a society that cannot come to a true consensus of the morality. For example, while there is about 55% opposition to gay marriage, but increasingly higher acceptance rates of homosexuals, according to a series of Gallup polls , it affects enough people in enough different places that the minority would be damaged by this type of legislation. And as Tocqueville wrote, 
“[A]fter each concession the strength of the democracy increases, and its demands increase with its strength.”  

While Tocqueville applied this principle to universal suffrage, it can also be applied to the acceptance of formerly alternative lifestyles, which at first would be seen with some apprehension or fear, then understanding, then acceptance, the conclusion for gay marriage is that it will eventually become legal, and the Republican efforts to block gay marriage continue to hinder, rather than assist, the democratic process.

However, Tocqueville tended to evaluate based on more homogenized societies, microcosms of the larger federal government, which an action such as a constitutional ban on gay marriage would not be. According to a side-by-side analysis of hot button issues, Democrats prefer to take a state’s rights approach to the issue of gay marriage, while Republicans tend to outright oppose it.Tocqueville would likely praise the Democrats for this move, because of his enormous respect for home rule within American society versus European society. As Tocqueville writes,

“The political existence of the majority of the nations of Europe commenced in the superior ranks of society, and was gradually and imperfectly communicated to the different members of the social body. In America, on the other hand, it may be said that the township was organized before the county, the county before the State, the State before the Union.” 

 While Democrats have the advantage in terms of Tocquevillian politics for gay marriage, they do not win this battle across the board. According to Majorie Hershey, both parties have increased strength for local level politics since the 1970s. In particular, Michigan’s Democratic Party has seen major improvements on the county level, going from a farce of a local organization to a fully-fledged contender, thanks to help from the United Auto Workers union. Add in support from an energetic party chair such as Howard Dean, whose 50-state strategy is building an infrastructure from the bottom up to support Democrats in all state, and Democrats have a fairly solid local level organization. 

 Republicans, on the other hand, do not have as strong of county level politics. Their state parties, on the other hand, are going extremely well by comparison. Money from the Republican National Committee keeps state organizations alive, and Republicans are able to reach out to younger constituents, bringing in college age interns as an outreach program. Bringing in the younger generations helps to keep democracy fluid and alive, and with programs such as Get out the Vote (GOTV) and the internships, Republicans can make as good of a show as the Democrats can.