Political parties have a significant impact on the functioning of Congress. How does being in the majority benefit a party? How has party voting changed over the last several decades? Is this change a good thing? Why or why not?

What will be an ideal response?

An ideal response will:
1, Describe features of political partisanship within Congress and their effects, such as party conferences or caucuses at the start of sessions giving unified purpose to a party agenda as well as acting to enforce party discipline.
2, Discuss the advantages of majority membership, such as selection of the Speaker of the House and the Senate's president pro tempore. The majority party also approves committee chairs (e.g., selection of House Rules Committee chairperson).
3, Describe party division between Republicans and Democrats as having widened over the last several decades, leading to greater partisanship. Some reasons for the increase in party line voting include changing regional bases of the parties (e.g., Deep South transformation from Democrat to Republican) and partisan conflict on the rise nationally among party activists and party advocacy groups. Ultimate causation is not completely understood but may be attributable directly to party affiliation or indirectly to the character of constituencies, or the ideological commitment of members of Congress.
4, Make a case for the underlying cause of bipartisan voting being attributable to either the changing nature of constituents or the ideological bent of Congress members.