Liberal Republicans vs. Conservative Democrats

[Cant trust em]

There's an interesting linguistic anomaly that I noticed here. The DLC is made up of moderate democrats that have sometimes been called conservative democrats. I've never even seen the phrase liberal republicans which is the opposite on the other side of the aisle. It's interesting to me that our political schism has shifted so far to the right that it's normal for democrats to slide over to republicans but they never come over our way.

This has been posted in General Discussion and not in the primaries for a reason.

[pstans]

1. They don't exist

The Republican party has purged the liberal Republican from their party by putting more conservative candidates against them in primaries.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/8182.html

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Do they then join our party as right wing Democrats, or stay in the GOP financially supporting them?

I think the first one scares me more than the second!

[Cant trust em]

11. Probably both

I suspect that the GOP has a stronger whip organization that gets their people in line through funding or other help/strong-arming. That's how they've won some of their legislative battles. I'm pretty much making up this theory as I go.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

12. It sounds plausible. We need to make our party include representing the most helpless again nt

[Cant trust em]

19. What's great is...

that those are core American values. Right-wing republicans have fooled people into thinking that helping other people is a sign of weakness, or something like that.

[Oak2004]

22. Liberal Republicans are/were genuine liberals, not equivalent to conservative Dems

and they don't exist anymore. The right drove us out of the party.

I don't know where all the liberal Republicans have gone.

I'll bet a fair number are now "independents". There generally were reasons why liberals picked the Republican Party: family loyalties, local electability, aversion to something about the Democratic Party, etc. For me it was aversion to the corruption of the Daley (the first) political machine. That aversion is why I'm not a Democrat but a Vermont Progressive Party member (a party which positions itself to the left of the Democrats in state and local races). I can't bring myself to join Richard J's party, even if he himself is ever so appropriately covered in six feet of dirt these days.

Others have no doubt joined the Democrats. I imagine still others have gotten disgusted with politics and have given up.

[Zynx]

2. The Democratic Party has always had a much more diverse ideological mix.

Liberal Republicans used to exist before they were ritually purged in the 1980s and 1990s.

[DJ13]

3. We call those people

Hillary supporters.

[pstans]

7. Nice one

:toast:

Are those the people that make up the DLC?

[robbedvoter]

20. I guess I didn't go far away from GD-P

[fencesitter]

4. Well, as a conservativley liberal demublican..

I can understand completely. ha.

[TwilightGardener]

5. I have seen the phrase "liberal Republicans" used--for folks like Chafee, Snowe, Collins,

Jeffords, Specter, sometimes Lugar--they are usually from blue states and may be pro-choice, or have some other consistently Dem-leaning views on foreign or domestic policy (voting for SCHIP, voting against torture, that sort of thing). We definitely have conservative Dems--my Senator, Helmet-Head Nelson, is one of them.

[Oak2004]

23. That's only because the political spectrum has shifted to the extreme right

The people you've listed are, at best, moderates, and have never to my knowledge identified as liberal Republicans. And they held office after the purge. Ex- liberal Republicans wouldn't, for the most part, recognize them as one of us.

[Ian David]

8. Democrats are the party of The Big Tent. Republicans are the party of The Wide Stance. n/t

[Raine]

9. I used to be a liberal Republcan

but when Raygun took control I could see my kind was no longer wanted in the party so I became a Democrat. As a Democrat I'm liberal to moderate depending on the issue but lean mostly liberal (no way am I a DLCer :puke: ).

[Sarah Ibarruri]

13. In what ways are you conservative? I, for example, am conservative in my beliefs that....

.... there should be modesty in dress, modesty in sexuality, there should be strong intense family ties, there should be the utmost respect towards the elderly, plus children should be raised with as little outside babysitting and outside caretaking as is possible given the fact that we all work nowadays, also that teens should be supervised and not permitted to run loose whereever they want, and so on.

I am about as left wing as they come when it comes to many things. For example, where my taxes go. I want as little as possible of my taxes to go to defense, and as much as possible to go to the helpless, the elderly, the homeless, education, health care, infrastructure, etc. I want corporations to be strongly held to standards and sentencing and prison used freely on CEOs that don't comply. I want the rich to be adequately taxed in proportion to the advantage they are taking from this country (you get more profit, you pay higher), and so on.

Who's more conservative or liberal? You or me?

[Raine]

16. I'm pretty much like you

in addition I'm against gun control mostly cause I think it's a losing issue. Also capital punishment is not a big thing with me. In theory I'm against it but not enough for it to make a difference in how I vote. I'm strong on the issue of a woman's right to choose and I'm a rabid environmentalist.

[Tesha]

10. The classical examples were people like Lowell Weicker and Margaret Chase Smith

The classical examples were people like Lowell Weicker
and Margaret Chase Smith. Weicker was driven from politics
by a politician named Joseph Lieberman who *RAN TO WEICKER'S
RIGHT*. (That worked out well, didn't it?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_P._Weicker%2C_Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Chase_Smith

Tesha

[El Pinko]

14. There once were moderate republicans...

But they never would have called themselves liberals. Bow there are only right-wing republicans, far-right-wing republicans and full on fascists who call themselves "conservatives".

Hell, there's only about a dozen or so people who even qualify as liberals on the democrat side anymore...


Which puts the US far to the right of almost any modern western nation...

[Cant trust em]

15. "Which puts the US far to the right of almost any modern western nation"

one of the key reasons I want to move to the UK later this year.

[Selatius]

17. The last of the Progressive Republicans were largely removed when Teddy Roosevelt ran as an Indie.

He sucked so many progressives out of the Republican Party that it ultimately fell into the hands of more fiscally conservative or pro-business elements in the party at the time. The progressives ultimately migrated to the Dems.

[ShadowLiberal]

18. Moderate republicans are a dying breed in congress

Moderate republicans are a dying breed lately, I mean look at what's happened to plenty of them lately.

Some like Lincoln Chaffe (probably misspelled his last name) just got voted out.

Some decided being a moderate will hold them back, so they became a radical neocon (McCain, Rudy).

Others just decided to call it quits (like representative Davis of Virginia)

[Echo In Light]

21. As corporate culture shifted the U.S. rightward, moderate dems became the staple

For many to exalt as the ideal compromise, and it's been a huge mistake as it's played directly to the benefit of corporate profits over people mindset. All it says is that people living in a densely propagandized social climate have been effectively swayed by said propaganda; a "moderate" dem is simply that much closer to the aims of right wing, corporate power ...OF COURSE it's widely promoted. How could it not be? That's why many dems find actual liberals to be too weird, conspiratorial minded, crazy, unrealistic, etc