1. Morris Fiorina highlights in his essay party responsibility. By "responsible parties" he means the people within the party that can be held responsible when the party needs someone to blame. The Responsible party theory gives the people a clear idea of who to blame or reward when something major happens for the party. To me, for a party to be responsible I imagine they must be willing to take the blame even if they feel they do not deserve it. Also, they need to be able to take criticism well.
2. Fiorina thinks parties today are not able to govern effectively or responsibly because the political stakes of today have been raised. With this, comes more conflict and both the stakes for winning and losing have increased. Furthermore, the parties today have been less successful at putting governing over electioneering. I think the reason parties are not able to govern effectively is because of the lack of respect for the opposite parties from both sides. Over the years political beliefs have become reasons to demoralize and shame anyone who does not have similar views. Parties might change to begin governing more effectively by accepting losses as just one loss and strategizing how to do better next time rather than seeing a loss as a total defeat.
3. There are a few reasons parties don't die according to Masket. First, our election rules that are in place for Congress and State legislators are set up as "winner-takes-all" elections allowing for stability between the two parties. Also, our elections support a two-party-system because we vote for individual people rather than parties. Essentially, Whoever gets the most votes wins so not many different opinions and parties can be represented. Furthermore, this concept tends to dissuade people from voting outside of the two parties because they feel it would be pointless.(Durverger's Law). Voting for a third-party candidate can also skew the election results which people do not like if there is one candidate significantly better then the other. I agree with all of the reasons he came up with to explain the persistence of our two-party-system. Another reason I would offer is that media mostly portrays only the two parties. By now, most people get their political information from the media whether it's more right leaning or left leaning. It is hard to have a new successful party without the proper media attention to inform the public.