Posted on 06/20/2014 5:12:31 AM PDT by cotton1706
The Republican Party — and both parties, really — have gotten more extreme in recent years. Everyone knows this.
What many people don't know is that, for the GOP, it wasn't a linear move.
As the below chart from the Pew Research Center shows, Republicans in the late 1990s and early 2000s actually appeared to move away from the far right portion of the political spectrum and toward moderation.
While 13 percent of people registered as "consistent conservatives" in 1994 and 20 percent claim that mantle today, the number fitting that description actually dipped down to 6 percent in 2004 — about one-third of where it is today.
And while 45 percent of Republicans were at least "mostly conservative" in 1994 and 53 percent fit that description today, that number dipped down to 31 percent in 2004.
Those are pretty big dips.
So what happened around 2004? Well, for starters, we're guessing a lot of it has to do with the fact that the GOP wasn't the opposition party. At the time, they were in the middle of the George W. Bush presidency and held both the House and Senate as well.
But Democrats don't show any similar differences between when they have been in power and when they haven't. Indeed, their progression toward the political extreme has been very consistent over the past 20 years. (It's also possible that the two parties simply adjust to being out of power in different ways.)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Look at the chart. Democrats getting progressively liberal while republicans for a while go along with with liberal tide.
That’s how we ended up with the likes of Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, Bob Corker, Arlen Specter, Mel Martinez, etc.
It stands to reason that the more one side wants to plunder a group of folks through the gov’t,
the more opposed the other side is going to get to that plundering.
Before Obama, so were the Democrats.
They’re not becoming more moderate. They’re becoming more extremely Liberal. You can not tell me taking on massive amount of debt and massive spending is considered a “moderate” position. And anyone who want to balance the budget is an extremist position
“Before the tea party, the GOP was actually getting more moderate”
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So...what is good about that?...NOTHING
1. The rise of conservative talk radio
2. The tsunami of online conservative news sources
3. Fox News
4. Realization that the GOP was determined to grow government at as fast a pace as RATS.
Meaningless. I’d like to see a multiple choice poll to define what liberal and conservative actually mean.
There's really no way to qualify this his point unless he defines 'liberal'. Once that is honestly done readers will conclude that the GOP's alleged U-turn would be a very good thing.
See my tag line and do your own homework on the Pubbies.
They’ve been on the same team for the past 100 years or so playing the ends (rich and poor) against the middle class.
Collectivism only benefits the rich and the poor until middle class runs out of money.
That's why there is a Tea Party. We don't want 'moderate' statists.
I love the spin in these stories. How is it not radical and extreme to run trillion dollar deficits? How is it not radical and extreme to enact new budget busting entitlements that are going to bankrupt us? And conversely, how is it extreme to say we have to live within our means and cut spending to match revenue just like any other family does?
Translation: before the Tea Party shored it up, the wall of sanity was starting to crumble.
BS. There isn't a bit of difference between the Tea Party agenda and Ronald Reagan's platform.
yep, both parties were moving left before
When the media defines “moderate”, what they mean is “more Leftist like me”.
That's why the TEA party was necessary.
Yes, yes he did.
What we see here is that every action provokes an equal opposite reaction.
Dems became more extreme. When they got into power rather than moderate and move to govern from the center they used their new found control to visciously implement their extremism.
The belief that Conservatives needed to make a stand and fight back was the driving force behind the Tea Party.
Truer words never have been spoken on that note my friend.
Everyone but true ‘republicans’ (in the classical sense of the word) hates the middle class: tyrants, kings, Councils, politburos, warlords, etc.
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