Have both parties polarized equally?

Probably not.
Virtually every measure of political polarization shows that Republicans have moved much further right than Democrats have moved left. "Despite the widespread belief that both parties have moved to the extremes, the movement of the Republican Party to the right accounts for most of the divergence between the two parties," writes political scientist Nolan McCarty. "Since the 1970s, each new cohort of Republican legislators has taken conservative positions on legislation than the cohorts before them. That is not true of Democratic legislators."

Scholars call this "asymmetric polarization." Mann and Ornstein argue that it is the central cause of today's dysfunction. "When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges," they write.
Have you any thoughts?

 

Two Whores fighting over the same John. Poor, poor John no matter whom he picks he is going to get a nasty STD...

 

Which party has their radicals in positions of power? The Republicans in power are liberals-light. The Democrats in power are far-left.

 

Liberal-lite is an idiotic reference that cons give to GOP members that aren't as right as they are. Here's a hint, when you are so far right, anything to the left of you looks like a liberal.

 

The GOP has failed to regain presidential power because the candidates pander so much to the far right in the primaries that they become unelectable in the general elections. Watch them doing the same thing again in the upcoming elections to Jeb Bush and Chris Christie.

 

Here's a hint, when your as far to the left as the Democrats you kill anyone to the right. The Republicans in power in Congress love debt, love spending, love Washington, and love the Democrats. The Democrats in power are even farther left. Oh, and Democrat is a party title for Socialists who know that word socialist won't help them get elected. The Democrat Party is clearly not democratic.

Dr. Gruber did nail it when he called these leftists fools, didn't he, Arxael?

 

Oh socialist, a buzzword idiotic cons use to describe actions they don't like. You wouldn't know a socialist if they smacked you upside the head.

What you are finally realizing is the GOP is the GOP, they are not liberal-lite, they have been this way all along. You conservatives use the word "liberal" as a swear word for anything bad when in fact it is truly the GOP, not liberal-lite.

Socialist is nothing but a buzzword for unintelligent con artists.

 

Not important.

The important measure is that BOTH parties have moved alarmingly to the authoritarian side of the spectrum.

Dem vs Rep, not that important because there is almost no difference in their deeds. Lib vs Con, not that important because most people have liberal views about some things and conservative views about others.

Authoritarians, on the other hand, threaten essential Liberty. And BOTH parties have been moving towards authoritarianism and away from the best interests of The People.

They want to force you not to drink Big Gulps.
They want to deny people marriage.
They want to force you to pay for other people's bad life decisions.
They want to force your doctor to not provide procedures you want.
They want to force you to pay for other people's healthcare.
They want to deny you the ability to defend yourself.
They want to deny you the ability to cater to smokers in your place of business.
They want to take your money by force to build turtle tunnels and teapot museums, while running up trillions in debt and wanting to RAISE taxes.

They are the enemy. Dems vs Reps are not the important measure. It's US (The People) vs THEM (authoritarians).

 

The radicalization of the GOP by TPs is confirmed by the paralyzing rancour within the Republican-controlled Congress as well as the party's inability to coalesce around any viable presidential aspirants.

As an existential certitude, the Party will migrate back to the centre where Americans voters abound.

“I’ve had it with this self-righteous, delusional wing of the party!”​

.

​

.

CONSERVATIVE CONGRESSMAN PETER KING (R)​

 

I'd rather trust in statistical data from Pew research that shows the opposite of what you are arguing. But you're free to trust in your Ornstein opinion piece. At least it's kosher with progressive ideology.

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/

 

There is nothing statistically unusual about one party ( Democrats) putting one president in power for two consecutive terms. With that in mind, your conclusion that they have " failed to gain presidential power" due to your reason stated, is a stretch to say the very least. Both parties have to campaign to the further reaches of their party to gain the nomination, and then do a 180 to pander to the center in the general election. There is absolutely nothing new about that concept.

 

Wow is that out of touch with reality.

The Democrats have clearly moved far to the left, so far they have lost (or actively forced out) almost every single one of the "Blue Dogs" and old school Democrats.

The Republicans have also moved to the left, that is why there is the civil war inside the GOP between the Conservatives/Tea Party and the establishment GOP. The GOP national leadership believes their future is with the "independents" that are in that ever-narrowing gap between the GOP and the socialist Democrats. As the GOP moves to the left in search of "independents", it has left its grass roots behind. The grass roots (Tea Party etc) is fighting back.

Its obvious that both parties have moved to the left. The Democrats moved to the left and lost their moderates (Blue Dogs), the GOP has moved left and left their conservatives behind.

***

And I looked up Nolan Mccarthy. Not impressed. The complete quote you used above is:

The evidence points to a major partisan asymmetry in polarization. Despite the widespread belief that both parties have moved to the extremes, the movement of the Republican Party to the right accounts for most of the divergence between the two parties. Since the 1970s, each new cohort of Republican legislators has taken conservative positions on legislation than the cohorts before them. That is not true of Democratic legislators. Any movement to the left by the Democrats can be accounted for by a decline in white representatives from the South and an increase in African-American and Latino representation.​

So if Republicans move to the Right its because they are politically motivated. But if Democrats move to the Left then that doesn't count because its due to more black & latino membership.

Sounds like typical PC BS and a convenient way to get a predetermined result that the polarization is the fault of Republicans.

 

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.


The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.


...But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html

 

`
Poor females who pick up STD from John.

 

Feb 25, 2015

Scott Walker’s view of Obama’s religion makes him a moderate

When Wisconsin Gov. and top-tier GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker was recently asked whether Barack Obama is a Christian, he famously responded “I don’t know.” This provoked no small kerfuffle.

But here’s the interesting thing: Walker’s statement actually places him in the moderate wing of the Republican Party. Indeed, saying “I don’t know” puts Walker not far from the average American, period.

In a survey I conducted in the fall of 2014, I asked this question: “Which of these do you think most likely describes what Obama believes deep down? Muslim, Christian, atheist, spiritual, or I don’t know.” Here are the results, broken down by party:





A staggering 54 percent of Republicans said that “Muslim” best described what Obama “believes deep down.” Thirty percent of Republicans answered the way Walker did, by selecting “I don’t know.” Relatively few Republican respondents “take [Obama] at his word,” as Mitch McConnell put it: only 9 percent selected “Christian” to describe what Obama likely believes.


...The percentage selecting “Muslim” is notably higher than in other polls conducted on this topic. This difference likely depends on how the question is phrased.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...view-of-obamas-religion-makes-him-a-moderate/

 

Have Republicans Moved So Far Right They Left Their Own Voters Behind?

On at least a couple of issues, one poll suggests they have.



But a new Washington Post poll shows something qualitatively different. Instead of what we've come to expect—Republicans have the support of their voters, Democrats have the support of their voters, and they fight over the few independents in between—on a couple of extremely important issues, elected Republicans have gone so far to the right that they've left their own voters behind.




With the important caveat that this is only one poll, I want to point to a couple of remarkable findings:

"Obama has said he will reduce U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to 9,800 by the end of this year, half of that next year and near zero by 2016. Do you support or oppose this troop-reduction plan?" Unlike other questions, this mentions the hated Barack Obama. And yet 60 percent of Republicans say they support Obama's plan.
"Do you think the federal government should or should not limit the release of greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort to reduce global warming?" 63 percent of Republicans say it should. When the poll went on to ask whether they'd still support the policy if it "significantly lowered greenhouse gases but raised your monthly energy expenses by 20 dollars a month," 51 percent of Republicans still said yes.

There's always going to be more diversity of opinion among a party's adherents than among its officeholders. By the time you work your way up through the party, heresies tend to get discarded as you navigate the path to success. So while there are some pro-life Democratic voters, there are almost no pro-life Democratic members of Congress, just as while there are some Republican voters who favor gun restrictions, there are almost no Republican members of Congress who do. But it's unusual, to say the least, to find places where a majority of a party's voters disagree with the consensus position of its leaders.



...In 2012, Republican presidential candidates got into trouble because most of them had said in the past that global warming is happening, and that the market-based approach of cap and trade would be a good way to address it—the standard Republican position at the time.


When the party moved right, they got caught in a bind.

http://prospect.org/article/have-re...hey-left-their-own-voters-behind#main-content

 

Seeing the Republicans jump up and clap like wind-up toys in Congress last week was almost shocking. They act as a huge blob of homogeneous thought, like something from a sci-fi movie. One Republican, Rand Paul, didn't clap exactly as the others, so his loyalty was questioned.

Thankfully, Democrats still have diversity in their party. They can question themselves, their nation, their policies (old and new) and don't need to worship something in order to love it. Since they aren't dogmatic, they stay fairly moderate and level headed. In other words, Democrats can clap differently.

 

The Radicalization of the GOP is the Most Important Political Story Today

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) once claimed that “80 to 85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists” and called those who worship in them “an enemy living amongst us.” He held McCarthyesque hearings into the supposed “radicalization of American Muslims,” parading a line of prominent bigots through the House Homeland Security Committee.

He’s an outspoken advocate of the war on terror – The New York Times called him “the Patriot Act’s most fervent supporter” – and has been a leading figure politicizing the attacks on our consular office and CIA station in Benghazi. King was a fierce opponent of George W. Bush’s efforts to reform the immigration system. He railed against the Occupy movement, and opposed both the 2009 stimulus package and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He called for the prosecution of journalist Glenn Greenwald for reporting Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. He has a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee and a zero percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America. The Drum Major Institute gave him a seven percent rating for his votes on issues of importance to the middle class last year.

In the past few weeks, dozens of political journalists have dubbed him a moderate. In fact, he’s been anointed a leader among the Republican moderates. He earned that label because, like other New York pols, he doesn’t blindly support the National Rifle Association, and because he opposes shutting down the government and threatening to unleash a potential economic catastrophe in a hopeless quest to defund Obamacare. That’s it. That’s how low the bar of moderation in the Republican Party now falls.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/10/th...-is-the-most-important-political-story-today/

 

This anodyne statement glosses over the radicalization of the Republican Party since the 1980s. That shift isn’t merely a matter of opinion. Political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal developed a statistical measure of lawmakers’ voting records that allows scholars to study the dynamics in Congress empirically. The system, known as DW-NOMINATE, ranks legislators according to how far they veer from the midline of congressional votes.


Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker used this data for his 2006 book, Off Center, in which he noted that since 1975, Senate Republicans have moved twice as far to the right as their Democratic counterparts have moved to the left. Of course, this shutdown is being driven by the Republican-controlled House, and in the lower chamber Hacker found that Republicans had shifted six times further to the right than their Democratic counterparts went to the left.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/10/th...-is-the-most-important-political-story-today/

 

Off topic, but I have a question: do even read or just cut and post propaganda?

 

From a thread dominated by vulgar partisanship emerges a post of pure unadulterated truth. Thank you.

 

You're complaining that Democrats have "radicals" while claiming that Republicans aren't extreme enough, using terms like "liberals-light"?

Extremism is harmful on both sides of the aisle.

 

I like your point regarding authoritarians, but I have personally benefited from having smoke-free public areas (allergy to ciggy smoke), and feel it was just as authoritarian to impose others' pollutants on people.

Your Big Gulps point is also vulnerable, as it could be reworked as,

"They want to brainwash you into drinking sucralose-laden Big Gulps."

The other points could be reversed as well--

"They want you to undergo medical procedures without being fully informed"

"They want to allow your psychotic neighbors to have automatic weapons"


etc.

 

Can't refute the well thought out and reasoned article linked huh? I'm shocked YOU might be the part of the conservative movement that has swung soooo far right!

We used to call them Birchers, they were the part of the GOP party, but the GOP was smart enough to keep them in the closet. Today they are the leading mouthpieces for the right!

 

I think you answered your own question.