Before the tea party, the GOP was actually getting more moderate

washingtonpost.com ^ | 6/17/14 | Aaron Blake

[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.)

[Joe Boucher]

worthless d.c. post is happy as long as pubbies go along with ALL the libs crap.
Course it NEVER goes the other way where the libs go for a conservative anything.

[skeeter]

What we see here is that every action provokes an equal opposite reaction.

Its almost funny how hard the writer tried to ignore the obvious connection.

[PATRIOT1876]

Good thing the TEA Party woke up the sleeping Republicans on their way to the Worker’s Paradise”

[Zenjitsuman]

Dems made the Blue Dog Dems an extinct breed

[Oberon]

Well heck yeah. Why do you think the Tea Party came to exist?

[dead]

Before the tea party, the GOP was actually getting more moderate

Well there's a Duh! comment if I ever read one.

Before the American revolution, England's power in the colonies was actually increasing.

Before the girl went on a diet, she had actually been gaining weight.

[fwdude]

I find the entire notion of “moderate” to be wholly despicable.

[DManA]

Duh, why do you think there’s a tea party?

[Little Ray]

By “moderate” I think he means further left - for both Democrats and ‘Pubbies.

[txrefugee]

Obama has taken the Democrats to the Left by 8% points, while the TEA Party has taken Republicans to the Right by only 3%. So the headline should read: “Obama Takes Democrats to the Left.” Another example of Washington Post bias.

[Moonman62]

The dream of the GOPe is to be indistinguishable from the Democrats.

[bill1952]

...Before the tea party, the GOP was actually getting more moderate liberal

[Iron Munro]

You May Be A member Of THE EVIL FAR RIGHT if -

You believe the US Constitution means what it says and only what it says

You are a patriot and love America

You believe in GOD

You believe that homosexual sex, pedophilia, pederasty and beastiality are unnatural acts

You believe that a true marriage can only be between a man and woman - not man and man or woman and woman

You believe the laws of the nation should be enforced as written

You believe in equal treatment for all

You believe it is immoral for the government to extort money from one person to give to another able bodied person

[Ben Ficklin]

You have to look at this as a sequence of events.

It begins in 1986 when moderate democrat Joe Lieberman formed the DLC under the premise that if the democrat party kept nominating leftwing populist candidates like Walter Mondale to run against moderate republicans like Reagan, the dems could never win the presidency.

Bill Clinton became head of DLC after Lieberman which he rode to the Presidency and would be known as the 3rd way compromising New Democrat willing to cut a deal with the moderate Main Street republicans. Clinton infuriated the left wing because of his involvement in NAFTA and Welfare Reform so the left wing began calling the DLC the republican wing of the democrat party.

Then DLCer Al Gore won the dem nomination and had DLCer Lieberman as veep.

Karl Rove invented the term Compassionate Conservative that Bush would use to try to push Gore off of the center.

But the left prevailed. Leftwinger Ralph Nader syphoned 80, 000 votes away from Gore in Florida, allowing Bush to carry the state with 700 votes and become Prez.

Then in 2008, Obama campaigned to the left of Hillary and the leftwing loved him, but after becoming prez, Obama became more centrist than Hillary, so now the leftwing detests Obama not just because he is moderate but also because he lied to them.

Now, faced with the prospect of Hillary winning the dem nomination, the leftwing is agitating for leftwing Mondale democrat Elizabeth Warren to challenge Hillary for the nomination.

[dead]

Nice analysis, but Obama is not more centrist than Hillary.

[ConservativeDude]

Obama became more centrist than Hillary”

scary

[Ben Ficklin]

Obama has been more centrist than Hillary, in 2009/2010 and 2013/2014.

In 2011 and 2012 he moved to the left for re-election purposes.

[Lakeshark]

Before Obama, so were the Democrats.

I don't think that's true in any way. Clinton was good at pretending he was moderate, and had the good sense to act it out well after the debacle of Hillarycare.

The unfortunate truth is he grew the government big time while claiming the era of it was over, he ratcheted every part of the debate to the left, and never did anything that would hurt the radical leftist cause.

He more or less instituted the deep drift to the left in all things, and solidified the totalitarian leftist sense of entitlement in the bureaucracies. the bamster simply continued the march off the cliff, but was set up well by the Clinton machine.

[Lakeshark]

The idea that the Reagan policies were "extreme" is the premise that allows this guy to write this bilge.

The GOP has drifted to the left, not become more conservative, there are zero examples of going farther to the right than Reagan did. Lest we forget, the Reagan presidency brought unprecedented success to America in terms of influence, a strong economy, and a populace that lived the American dream more successfully than ever before. Yep, so "extreme".

On the other hand, beginning with the Clinton machine, the dems have moved further to the left every year, to the point now they're entirely immersed in the politics of totalitarianism. They think they're so right, they really believe they ought to be able to do anything they want with impunity, without checks, without balances and without shame believe their ideas are so good that the ends justify the means.

[depressed in 06]

The title should be Bolshecrats becoming more Stalinist, Republicans becoming less.