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I’m old enough, I suppose you too Greger that can remember when both parties agreed on most issues, not all. There were some highly divisive issues even back then. That the partisan divide on political ideology was more like a small stream than the Grand Canyon or the Pacific Ocean. Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, even Nixon didn’t have this highly partisan effect. You can look at the votes on the Civil Rights legislation and Medicare, the difference wasn’t parties.
Civil Rights Bill votes in congress House Democrats 153 AYE 91 NAY – Republicans 136 AYE 35 NAY Senate Democrats 46 AYE 21 NAY – Republicans 27 AYE 6 NAY
The problem I think is both parties have become much more ideological. Back than both major parties had their conservatives and liberal wings. The Democrats had their solid conservative southern base while the Republicans held their Rockefeller liberal Northeastern base. It’s hard to imagine today when the Northeast was Republican territory and the south Democratic. Since then both major parties discarded their unwanted wings and are now hard at work discarding their moderates. Which has increased the number of independents which most fall somewhere in-between the two major parties. Of course, you have those independents to the far right or far left of both parties. This in-between ideological wise may not be that accurate either. I found a lot of independents are for somethings the Democrats stand for, against others being the same for the Republicans, for some, against some. I like to use myself as an example, pro-choice and pro-2nd amendment at the same time. One who backs the democrats on some issues and the republicans on others. But have no political party to call home. I never belonged to a political party except Ross Perot’s Reform Party and that ceased when Pat Buchanan and his cronies took it over.
This isn’t saying that from IKE on that the Republican Party wasn’t known as the conservative party or the Democratic Party as the liberal party. But I remember several Republicans stating during the 40-year reign of Democratic control of the house of representatives 1955-1994, that the Republican Party believed in the same things the Democratic Party did, but only a little bit less.
Today, the hard-core liberals are all democrats, the hard-core conservatives are all republicans and the non-hard core of either political ideologies are independents or swing voters. I’ve always preferred swing voter to independents. Hence the super, mega, ultra-high partisanship base on hard- core political ideology between the two major parties.
It's high past time that we start electing Americans to congress and the presidency who put America first instead of their political party. For way too long we have been electing Republicans and Democrats who happen to be Americans instead of Americans who happen to be Republicans and Democrats.
