"Far more Americans see GOP as extreme and uncompromising"

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Far more Americans see GOP as extreme and uncompromising

By Greg Sargent at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/27/far-more-americans-see-gop-as-extreme-and-uncompromising/

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Beutler notes that while Republicans have become more rigidly conservative, Democrats have not retreated into an “equally rigid reactionary leftism,” with the result that there simply may be no policy space left into which Republicans can moderate:

Both parties have become more ideological over the years, but only one has become culturally extreme and inflexible. One of the consequences is that the country’s policy commitments have become more conservative than they might have been if this polarization had been symmetric. But another is that Republicans have a hard time tacking left without bumping into a niche that’s already been filled.

This is what I was getting at last week when I argued that the electorate isn’t nearly as polarized on the issues as Congressional dysfunction makes it appear. On many major challenges — immigration reform, the need for infrastructure investments to spur the recovery, how to tackle long term fiscal challenges, the need to maintain a strong safety net — there is broad majority support for what can loosely be described as Democratic solutions. Even on Obamacare — where there is more polarization and overall disapproval remains high – there is more public agreement than you might think on at least some of its core principles.

But this broad consensus is obscured by the fact that the House GOP positions agenda is heavily skewed towards the preoccupations of the Tea Party base. Indeed, as I noted in a breakdown of more recent polling, this is particularly visible on economic and poverty issues, where the party’s positions on inequality, the minimum wage, and unemployment benefits are overwhelmingly shared by Tea Party Republicans, while large numbers of non-Tea Party Republicans side with the rest of the public.




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1. The Republicans will remain LOST lost lost IN in in Space space space. They have painted

themselves into a corner.