The two parties face the same realities of the limited governable spectrum of the US
I think that's where people get confused and call them "the same".
People forget that the New Deal was, well, a "deal": on the one hand, the state got a lot of social spending programs; on the other hand, large businesses became the default way normal people interface with the economy (this was a new idea, remember). Businesses became who actually collected taxes and Social Security spending (in that they physically take it out of the paycheck) and who paid for health insurance and helped (initially) to finance retirements. Businesses paid payroll taxes and unemployment insurance. If you've ever tried self-employment (let alone running a business), you'll see how much administrative and financial costs for economic participation businesses made transparent to ordinary people working.
Republicans don't like the existence of the safety net, but can't simply get rid of it (the part they could, the Great Society, they could specifically because it wasn't a "deal" where everybody had a reason to buy into it directly). The large state, the large corporate sector, and most importantly the troubling nexus between them developed over generations and will probably take as long to untangle. Liberals were angry when Carter deregulated the airlines, or Clinton allowed retail banks to run proprietary desks. Conservatives were angry when Poppy raised taxes and Shrub vastly expanded Medicare. But, despite our claims, neither Carter nor Clinton were DINOs, and despite Freepers' claims, neither Bush was a RINO. They responded to the relatively narrow amount of steerage the government actually has in an existing system.
Trade agreements come to mind. You could undo every single trade agreement there is, and textile mills would not come back to the US; shirts would just be more expensive. This isn't some cabal of Rothschilds trying to destroy the middle class; this is the basic fact that the dollar is overpriced and just about everybody wants it that way (the second that stops being true, our ability to borrow for spending gets very limited). The postwar US middle class was premised on the impoverishment of the developing world (call it Mercantilism 2.0, if you like), and as that paradigm starts to change, so does the US standard of living.
Now, this is not to go down the Tyler Cowen "we're all going to be poor now" track -- we're still far and away the richest country in the world, the largest petro producer, the largest agriculture producer, and the largest manufacturer in the world. But the Great Big Money Fire Hose we were used to as the world recovered from WWII and the Cold War may be slacking. But even more to the point, we have structures set in place that trade a social safety net for large corporations' influence on the economy, and that can't change quickly. If changing that is more important to you than anything else, then you need to start moving every economic activity you can to a co-op; that will do more good than politics.
To put it depressingly, for the foreseeable future we have the choice of what sort of corporatist system we can have: one where redistribution of the absurd amount of wealth produced is vilified or one where it's considered a positive aim of society. We don't like that. The conservative base doesn't either. (We seem to keep talking past each other on this point; think back to the Tea Party/OWS Venn diagram below.) Among the parties' leaderships, people either do like it or have just learned to deal with it.
The bailout of the banks produced a lot of rage on the left and the right. It's understandable. But the reason there was such a seamless transition between the W and Obama administrations on this question (though remember Obama extended TARP to include the automakers, over GOP objections) was not the mythical Goldman-Sachs cabal. Or, if you prefer, it was the very real Goldman-Sachs cabal which was simply the fact that if Goldman Sachs went out of business we would all be much, much poorer. (Also, as a reminder, TARP made money for the government...)
Anyways. Government moves things very slowly, and is always frustrating and disappointing. But the two parties aren't remotely the same, even though the face the same objective circumstances when they're in power.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But at that point the Republicans will largely be for government spying.
Too bad your posting time is not DU's peak time.
-Mark Twain - Following the Equator