Identity politics versus interest politics.
On its face, this presents a puzzle: how can conservatism be the more popular ideology even as the Democrats are the more popular party?
Grossmann and Hopkins disagree. They see this not as a puzzle about American politics but as an explanation for why it works the way it does. They note that 73 percent of Republican voters say they're conservative but only 42 percent of Democratic voters say they're liberal. And they note that while voters tend to agree with Republicans on the philosophical questions in American politics (should government be smaller?) they tend to agree with Democrats on the policy questions in American politics (like should Social Security be smaller?).
73 percent of Republican voters say they're conservative but only 42 percent of Democratic voters say they're liberal
The Republican Party, in other words, has a very good reason to base itself around philosophical conservatism, while the Democratic Party has a very good reason to base itself around policy deliverables. And so the Republican Party bases itself around philosophical conservatism and the Democratic Party bases itself around policy deliverables.…
Republicans are uncompromising because compromise tends to expand the scope of government. Democrats are willing to make deep concessions because policy moves in a generally liberal direction. Republicans have a clearer message about government because their message about government is fundamentally popular. Democrats talk more about policy because what they have to say about policy is fundamentally popular.…
Democrats tend to project their preference for policymaking onto the Republican Party — and then respond with anger and confusion when Republicans don't seem interested in making a deal. Republicans tend to assume the Democratic Party is more ideological than it is, and so see various policy initiatives as part of an ideological effort to remake America along more socialistic lines.…
Still, there's much that this data does illuminate. I've often heard liberals wonder why there's no Democratic analogue to the Tea Party. I've often heard conservatives complain that their party doesn't spend enough time coming up with serious policy solutions for issues like health care. And, to be sure, there are some liberals trying to popularize Tea Party-like tactics and some conservatives trying to come up with sweeping new health reforms. But it's hard for these initiatives to succeed. There's a tendency to imagine the parties as mirror images of each other, and so to believe they can easily follow the other's strategies. But they can't. The parties are good at different things because they really are different.Vox
Why Democrats and Republicans don’t understand each other
Ezra Klein
In the right media you always hear the people there refer to themselves as 'conservative' or 'libertarian' rather than 'Republicans' and this is not the same case in the left media they refer to themselves as "Democrats"....
ReplyDeletefor instance if you watch MSNBC it is a media outlet for "Democrats" while if you watch Fox it is for "conservatives" and right "libertarians" .... the left media never refers to themselves as 'liberals' or even 'progressives' they are 'Democrats'...
So the people just comply with the nomenclatures they hear the most...
And I would also think that more 'liberals' would have cell phones only so they cant get to a lot of 'liberals' in the polling...
And this article from Klein here misses the whole other axis of the 'political compass' which I think is the more relevant/interesting axis as that one is the "measure of faith" ie at least attempts to measure ones tendency towards liberty or authority....
You have a nation here in which <79% of people self-identify as "Christian":
http://religions.pewforum.org/reports
So what is going in regards to faith within this group is what is probably safe to say is what is having the major influence on what is going on in the US... you have an 80% cohort here c'mon...
So today faith in US Christendom is waaaaaay down as revealed by all of the rampant libertarianism out there ... so we have all of this chaos and malaise that we can see...
and it directly follows that as Klein is lamenting here "nothing gets done" in DC...
But Klein is looking at this via the wrong axis....
the current situation makes perfect sense and is not tricky/complicated at all if you look at it along the liberty/authority axis... we are simply tilted waaaaaaaaaaayy towards the libertarian side....
"nothing gets done" is textbook libertarian utopia...
not Democrat utopia or Republican utopia... rather libertarian utopia...
this near faith-less cohort of the US is still winning at this point...
And national stage republican conservatism has much different look and feel to local conservatism. The town I live in is the most conservative county in America probably but we have a lesbian mayor, our neighborhoods are the most diverse and well integrated. Of course racism exists and much needs to be done to fix all sorts of inequality but there is more than one way to skin a cat. And the Republican way isn't hellish. Nor the Dems way in California, isn't all that bad to live in. From that perspective all the rhetoric nationally seems like splitting hairs as if Neither partys preferred policies stray too far from the center. Except on the most controversial social policies, there isn't much difference in what people expect or will allow in policy from politicians on either side of the aisle.
ReplyDeleteright Ryan and the real issue which is liberty/authority remains covered if we just focus on the "left/right" all the time... its like the blind arguing with the blind...
ReplyDeletethis is like the Foundations funding both sides of an issue... INET, Schwartz, NAF, etc... like how INET has both Rogart and Wray on the same payroll.... wtf?
Youre never going to have a war with a decisive outcome if you fund both sides and obscure the real issues...
rsp,