Matt Aldana

The party divide

Students around Grounds have cooled off from the Bush/Kerry debates that filled the first semester, and once again the sociopolitical mood has shifted back to the criticism and defense of national policy. With every major political student organization stressing the importance of voting in the latest election and an apparently strict divide growing between the stances of the candidates, people have begun to associate the personality of parties with their respective presidential candidates rather than with party ideologies. But how accurate are the associations made between candidate and party by the casual political observer, and what impact do they have? The departure from a gray public to a black and white, Bush or anti-Bush, public can be largely attributed to George W.