We normally don’t talk about politics here on the English cafe but I have got lots of questions about the political parties in the United States and so I thought I spend a few minutes talking about what they were and what they did.
A “party” is of course a organization, a political group of people who tend to believe in the same things and support the same ideas. In the United States, the two most important political parties really the two only parties are the democratic party and someone who is a member of the democratic party is called a democrat. well, there have been lots of famous democrats, Bill Clinton was a democrat, Jimmy Carter in the 1970s was a democrat, those were the two last democratic presidents. the other major party in the United States is the republican party and if you are a member of the republican party is called the republican, it’s the same word and republican president include the current president George.W.Bush, his father George.H.W.Bush and Richard Nixon were republican presidents. generally speaking, the democratic party is more liberal in its politics, “liberal” in the United States means usually someone who wants more government action, more government spending, more especially federal government involvement in different problems, that word “liberal” means different things in different countries. the republican party is much more conservative and to be conservative in the United States means for example that they want less government involvement, more local stay and local involvement and less government spending in general, those are some very general differences.
We also use the term “left” and “right” to talk about political parties in English . a party of the left or a “left-wing” party would be a party that is very liberal, we sometimes use the expression “he is to the left of these other persons” meaning he has more liberal ideas, similarly we talk abut the “right” as being a conservative person, someone says “I am a member of the right-wing”, that is a very conservative part of the political parties. There are conservative democrats and there are liberal republicans but most democrats are liberal and most republicans are conservative. our current president George.W.Bush is definitely a conservative in his ideas.
There are some what we call 3rd parties in the United States and the 3rd party is a minor party, any parties beside the big two and there are lots of 3rd parties, some of them are very liberal and some of them are very conservative, the most famous one is the green party and this is a group of people who are very concerned about the environment and that is one of their issues, one of their believes. they actually have presidential candidate that get some votes, his name was Ralph Nadar and Ralph Nadar was famous in the United States for being someone who was a consumer advocate, a “consumer” is someone who buys something, and a “advocate” is someone who try to protect or help another person.
The majority, in fact I think almost everyone in the government, the federal government is either a democratic or a republican, there are very few independent politicians, it’s very difficult to get elected unless you are a member of either the republican or democratic party, you need money to win the election, you need to spend a lot of money and most people don’t have that kind of money to spend so they need to get help. here in California we have a republican governor Arnold Schawrzenegger and we have a democratic house and senate or representatives are mostly democrats and that happened a lot, you have a conservative republican as governor but the what we call the legislature, the legislature are the representatives from all the different parts of the States, they are in California are democrats and so that’s happening in many different States.
