In this post, I make two assumptions:
1. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have shifted policies, overall, to the right over the last 30 or so years.
2. The Parties started at policy positions that better represented the desires and interests of most Americans. Their rightward shift moves them further away from representative political ground, rather than toward a more representative position. (Perhaps the best evidence for this is extraordinary levels of dissatisfaction with the United States government, and bipartisan pursuit of social inequality).
Democrats, as best I can tell, are only “liberal” insofar as the term means “to the left of” or “more progressive than” the Republican Party. In our political system, the Republican Party is also defined against the Democratic Party; but the “conservatism” of the former reflects notions of “traditional” and “old fashioned” values, taking some meaning from without the two-party spectrum and making its identity more concrete. Moreover, the Republican Party has established a hard line on particular issues, such as opposition to abortion and raising taxes. Individual Republican officials may violate these values, but on the whole the Party has adhered to them, especially in presidential rhetoric.
On the other hand, Democrats have espoused a softer approach to policy (think of President Obama’s Grand Bargain). As a result, they have greater flexibility to incorporate conservative policies to capture “swing” voters. The Democratic Party tries to exploit this flexibility by consistently selecting conservative candidates during primaries, moving to the right on key issues, and embracing and/or expanding Republican policies under “conservative” rationales (such as “national security”).
The Republican approach shuns “center” voters. At the 1992 Republican convention, for instance, a CBS poll found that only 7% of Republican delegates supported “the rigid position on abortion taken in the party’s platform” that allowed abortions “under no circumstances.” It is not merely that dogmatic views make attracting them more difficult, though it does. Rather, the party’s “no compromise” tactics—most clearly reflected by Republican legislators—evidences that something motivates them other than the “center” strategy of the Democrats. For example, if the Republican Party chose to compromise on the budget, one imagines that they would more likely attract voters than lose them.
With the Democrats aggressively courting center voters to the right of their base, and Republicans shunning center voters but getting crowded by the Democrats, both parties move to the right. It is also worth noting that, since elites control both parties, one should expect to see a political trajectory toward lower taxes/greater inequality, deregulation, greater corporate influence, etc. Plus, Republican values play off of conservative sentiments and identities, so as the “liberal” Democrats move right, a voter who identifies as “conservative” may (somewhat artificially) seek a candidate even further right than he or she would otherwise. Finally, “conservative values” coalesce with policies that favor elites (like smaller government, i.e. deregulation and lower taxes), and are stoked by them (elitist, i.e. bad, governance creates more disgust and distrust of government).
Assuming that the two parties started from a more reasonable policy position and move to the right, the Republicans, as the vanguard (having started to the right of the Democrats), lead the way into strange, extreme political territory. As we move toward a more unequal and unjust policy regime, it may become more difficult to retrace our steps backwards to a fair and representative government.
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