What do you think are your political faction's branches?

In order not to digress from the topic of the 2012 thread, I'm putting this here.

As I'm a registered Republican, I'll fill in the blanks for my point of view. Following suit will help avoid straw men.

• Neoconservatives. This faction is primarily concerned with an aggressive foreign policy and are the most convinced that America's got the best cultural standard.
• Fiscal conservatives. They're mainly concerned with promoting Austrian economics. Personal responsibility has been a resurgent motif lately.
• Theocons. They're concerned with "Judeo-Christian values." These seem to be the Republicans most Millennials think of, and it doesn't appear to reflect well on the party.
• Paleoconservatives. Like the fiscal conservatives, only isolationist and, frankly, racist. Neocons will talk about the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico, but if it sounds like an idee fixe, you're listening to a paleocon.
• Libertarians. Like the fiscal conservatives, only explicitly socially liberal. Many of these people left the Libertarian Party after 9/11, so expect a hawkish foreign policy.
• Ambitious tools. As in any party, this is the origin of too many of the actual candidates.
• Mix and match.

What do you folks think of your faction?

edited 26th Mar '12 2:02:42 PM by DomaDoma

Well, I guess I'll do the SNP. Although "branches" is probably the wrong way to describe it; internal factions have been banned since 1982 as the SNP wanted to be a broad-church with Independence transcending everything else. So there's a lot of overlaps here.

• The Social Democrats - Easily the most dominant aspect of the SNP, especially from the late 1960s onwards due to the efforts of then-leader Billy Wolfe.
• The Socialists - A more radical, left-wing version of the above. Included most of the present party leaders in the "79 Group" that wanted to take the party further Left in the 1980s, but they've joined the above since.
• Gradualists - The Gradualists believe that Independence can be won through progressively accumulating powers to the Scottish Parliament. Again, this is the overwhelming majority position.
• Fundamentalists - Believe that Independence should the party's central issue, rather than focusing on accumulating other powers. Were generally opposed to devolution and have largely died out.
• Republicans - Those who believe that Scotland should be an independent Republic, rather than an independent Kingdom. Again, a minority in the party.

edited 26th Mar '12 2:25:05 PM by TheBatPencil

My party, GroenLinks - which literally translates to 'GreenLeft', but let's go with 'Dutch Green Party' here - has two main "wings": basically, individualists and collectivists. Although I have to say that the difference is more one of priority than of position: the individualists emphasise "immaterial" issues like gay rights, multiculturalism and freedom of speech, whereas the collectivists seem more concerned with economic policy. The guiding principle of the former group boils down to 'the individual should be free to live the life he wants to live'; of the latter, 'the collective should ensure that everyone gets the opportunity to live the life he wants to live'. Both translate into more or less the same policies, but they attract entirely different groups of people.

The two wings get along fine most of the time; still, there are those within each wing who take a rather dim view of the other wing. If we look through these negative glasses, we see the collectivists as stubborn, old-fashioned socialists, still fighting the battles of half a century ago, in the naïve belief that society is "malleable" - and the individualists as cynical pragmatists who don't grasp the importance of the party's left-wing ideals, and carry the blame for the party's "elitist" image (we are very bad at winning the hearts of working-class voters; we don't even really try anymore).

I'm definitely in the collectivist camp myself.

edited 27th Mar '12 11:00:34 AM by MidnightRambler

Honestly, I don't subscribe to any political party or faction. I'm somewhat of a wildcard.

It is heartwarming, in this age of selfishness and greed, to see a group of people so committed to boosting the economy of a far-off Alpine country!

United States Democrats are an interesting and diverse bunch.

• Greens: Easy to understand, this group places environmental responsibility and the need to combat climate change as the highest priority of all human beings.
• Ecoterrorists: These are the folks whom even most liberals think of as crazy because they like to spike trees, throw paint on people wearing fur coats, board whaling vessels, etc.
• Social liberals: By far the most generalized group, these are folks who see government's role as maximizing equality of opportunity for the greatest number of people.
• Blue Dogs: Also known as DINO's, this is a group of politicians who tend to vote Republican on fiscal issues but Democrat on social issues.
• The disenfranchised: Pretty much everybody who's been screwed by the system and sees Big Money or systemic racism or organized religion as keeping them down.
• Socially conservative minority groups: These are mainly Black and Latino groups who side with the Democrats on fiscal issues but are very religious and therefore tend to social conservatism.

We have porportional representation, which means the factions tend to splinter off to make their own parties.

I'm SNP, too. Generally we don't branch. We have one overarching goal and are, as a faction, pretty focussed on that.

edited 27th Mar '12 12:30:08 AM by InverurieJones

We have proportional representation too, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all dissenting factions within parties 'splinter off'. Dutch party politics has seen a lot of splits, but also many fusions, and currently most parties have two or even three different "wings".

edited 27th Mar '12 2:43:04 AM by MidnightRambler

What Mark said.

Is it just me, or are the factions of the Democratic party in America much less distinct than the factions in the Republican party? Republican factions have things that they violently disagree with each other on, while Democratic factions simply have different priorities, but not incompatible goals.

Very much so. Which makes it all the more ironic that the Democrats are the ones who fail to display solidarity on issues that matter to them, while Republicans are seemingly motivated to vote in lockstep despite deep factionalization.

I think it comes down to the fact that the Democratic interest base is really very broad when you think about it, and covers the spectrum from just slightly left of center in some ways to rabidly leftist in others. Getting all of those folks to vote the same way is like herding cats. There's no Tea Party-inspired litmus test to become a Democrat, for example.

edited 27th Mar '12 9:54:26 AM by Fighteer

Within the Liberal Democrat party there are two major factions: the social liberals and the economic liberals, also known as Orange Bookers after this. The social liberals are more leftist and favour using state means to eradicate inequality, whereas the economic liberals, who are more centrist, favour things like economic liberalism and tax cuts for the poor to achieve the same goal. This split can largely be traced to the party's hybrid roots as a merger of the old Liberal and Social Democrat parties, although it should be noted that this split is nowhere near being extreme and isn't even particularly mutually exclusive. It's worth noting that current leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is an Orange Booker who contributed to the book in question.

edited 27th Mar '12 10:59:29 AM by pagad

Well, I for one would be rather horrified by anything like the Tea Party rising up in the Democrats. One group that extreme is already bad enough. I do believe that the Democrats would benefit from some more in step voting, but that requires getting people with balls. Obama, as much as I like him, can't carry the party on his own. I think Teddy R. was the only one who could do that. The Dems need some more strong personalities in there, preferably also armed with facts.

I'm not sure what to think of the Greens, though. I've tried reading a couple of their websites; everything outside of their Green policies seems very wishy washy. I guess that's because they usually vote Democrat due to lack of actual Green Party members who run on that ticket.

Polo Democratico Alernativo Colombiano (Alternative Democratic Pole) Mainly, a coaltion of all the Left leaning political movements in Colombia.

Nationalists: Followers of the now diseased dictator Rojas Pinilla who ruled the country in the 50s, notable amongst other things for having been the only Colombian military dictator in the XX century, giving woman the right to vote, building the country´s highways and airports, and having toppled a genocidal conservative goverment. When he sought to extend his dictatorship he was toppled and replaced by a coalition of liberal and conservatives.

M19: Armed wing of the above mentioned faction, but less conservative, fought an armed conflict against the goverment after Rojas Pinilla, after being rehabilitated in the 60s, lost the elections, many say, do to massive corruption in the vote counting process. In 1986 they took hostage the judges of the Colombian Supreme court. The military, nontheless, would go on to kill the guerilla comando, along with the hostages, and then it would go on to torture and execute some of the survivors, amongst them at least one insurgent, a couple of civilians and a judge. They would sign a peace agreement with the goverment later on, and become one of the 3 dominant factions during the constitutional assambly of 1991, which produced the Colombian Constitution still in use. Being center left, they ussually stand out for more rights for worker collectives, investigation of human right abuses committed by the goverment, protection of ecological sites, protection of minorities, heavy goverment regulation of bussinesses, state own universities, schools, and companies, and more autonomy with respect to the relationship the country has with the US.

Communists: The survivors of a movement know as the UP (union patriotica) which was massacred in the 90s and which was said to have political ties to the FARC. The more left leaning members of the party, they represent the "extreme" left, and their biggest plataform is agrarian reform and having a peace process with the leftist guerrillas still in the countryside. The have close ties with the Bolivarian Movement (Hugo Chavez). They cause a lot of trouble for the party do, and have the nasty habit of creating parallel movements outside of the coallition. The main reason why they adhere to the coaltion is because they are otherwise not allowed to have representation in congress do to electoral laws regarding votation quotas.

Moir: MOIR or, The Independent Worker´s Revolutionary Movement, it mainly looks after worker´s rights, and heavily oposses free trade agreements.

Social democrats: All remaining center left politicians which do not adhere specifically to any of the above mention political movements which make up the party. Notable amongst them is Carlos Gaviria, former judge of the Colombian Constitutional Court. They favour a mix economic model, oppose obligatory conscription, favour gay rights, and the legalization of illigal substances such as marihuana and cocaine on the grounds of the rights of self determination of the individual, and to reject the war on drugs which they disagree with strongly.

Also notable is a dissidence called the progessive Party represented by Gustavo Petro, mayor of Bogota. As of yet the Progressive party has no representation outside of Bogota.

edited 2nd Apr '12 11:22:20 AM by Baff

Doma Doma, by Libertarians you mean Right-Wing Libertarians in this case, right? I'm one of those myself. I'm not sure how much of a cohesive group that is, there seems to very much be a Sliding Scale of Libertarianism.

Well, I'm not officially party member anyway, so...

If I were to answer for the SPD (Social Democrats), they have two classical wings: The moderates and the leftists. In the parliamentary faction of the SPD in the Bundestag the formers are organized in the Seeheimer Kreis (Seeheim Circle), and are currently the most influential faction. Both Schröder and the current leading 'troika' of the SPD belong to them. The latter is organized in the Bundestag in the "Parlamentarische Linke" (Parliamentarian Left). The party's secretary general belongs to them, but that's about it. There is also the "Netzwerk Berlin" (Berlin Network), a small group in between, but they don't have enough of an own profile to be really counted as a wing. Generally, the left wing has my emotional sympathies, but I think Seeheim really is the only chance for the party, and their Agenda 2010 reforms, despite how unpopular they were, really did shape Germany up. Alas, they have gone a bit too far into that direction, and have become a bit too neoliberal, big business friendly and conformist. Brandt would be ashamed.

Now, if I were to answer for the Pirates... ov vey. Way to chaotic and diverse to even have such things as coherent wings. The two main discussions is between those who want to focus the party on its core topics, and those who want to have a universal party programm (the latter are clearly winning), and those who are economically moderate/rightwing and those who are economically far leftist (so far, the latter ones are clearly winning, but that could change again). Personally, while I am economically rather leftwing (moderately so, as implied above), I'd rather hold with the moderates here, simply because the economical leftists among the Pirates are far too leftist, but even rather I would have the party concentrate on its core topics and ignore economical politics in general.

I'm a registered Republican in California, so here's mine:

• Religious conservatives: Basically while not as dominant a force as say, in the South, still have some clout over the party at least. Most tend to be evangelical Christians or Roman Catholics, and are disproportionately Anglo, though not as Anglo as the media portrays them. Will ally with the social conservative elements in the Democratic Party to get some of their stuff through, as we saw with Prop 8.
• Orange County conservatives: Historically the base of the party around here, they're fiscally conservative (but certainly not Austrian - more supply-side if anything), and are concerned chiefly with maintaining low taxes. Some elements are concerned with the increasing number of Spanish-speakers, though that element seems to largely be dying out.
• Inland conservatives: Basically pro-business, even to the point of cooperating with the more moderate Democrats in promoting business. Also fiscally conservative, with some social conservatism thrown in on occasion.
• Rural conservatives: In California, the number one concern for agriculture is water, and specifically how the Federal government is hiking water prices and restricting supply. Everything else is secondary. Tend to be very suspicious of environmentalism. Has a strong isolationist strand, particularly around the Bakersfield area.
• Nativists: Think every immigrant should either completely anglicize, or get out of the country. Think Arizona West. Not as big of a deal as they were in the 90's, but the rest of the party is still picking up the mess.

Note that despite the stereotype of the Republican in California as being Anglo, there are significant numbers of Spanish-speaking members, esepcially at the local level and the farther you get from a metro area. Tend to be born here, though.