Political parties stand for…

… election, nothing else.

Coyote Blog:

As I grow older, and have had more time to observe, I find the shifts in party positions fascinating and oddly opaque to most folks who are in the middle of them - perhaps this is one advantage to being part of neither major party.   Some of the shifts are generational -- for example both parties have moved left on things like homosexuality and narcotics legalization.   Some of the shifts have to do with who controls the White House -- the party in power tends to support executive power and military interventionism, while the opposition tends to oppose these things.   Some of the shifts have to do with who controls intellectual institutions like college in the media -- the group in control of these institutions tends to be more open to first amendment restrictions, while the out-of-power group become desperate defenders of free speech (look how the campus free speech movement has shifted from the Left to the Right).

This is only surprising if you expect a party to have some underlying doctrine or system of beliefs. What they really have is a style consisting of strategic positions and tactical actions they think will get them the most votes. It’s a lot like a sports team that assembles talent they think will win. Whether you get a passing game or an isolationist party depends on the preferences of strategists, skills of the players, the opposition they face and the current mix of attitudes among the fans and society.

The changes Coyote describes are pretty much inevitable. Just as an exciting passing game may sell more tickets for any team, if society moves away from a hard-line position on drugs all parties will do that as well even if not to the same extent. Any party in power will have a greater ability to influence other institutions and will try to do so. Out of power, a party has to resist by embracing free speech and other Bill of Rights guarantees that were created for just that purpose.

There are big changes over time, the most obvious being the race struggle.  One team carried that ball for more than a century only to fumble and see it carried since by the team that had been standing in the schoolhouse door. Or a candidate may be vilified for doing something his opponent did the week before, no different than a coach lambasting the ref are not calling on the other team is a man was guilty of the same thing two plays earlier. To them it’s not really about doctrine or ethics but merely style and what tactic will move the team closer to the goal at the moment.