From Salon: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/16/the_left_and_right_are_not_similar_another_reality_check/
As uncompromising Tea Partyers like Rand Paul run the GOP, real lefties like Bernie Sanders are often marginalized
By Alex Seitz-Wald
Friday, Aug 16, 2013
That Tea Party conservatives aren’t much interested in compromise isn’t particularly surprising. But it’s striking to see the sentiment laid out in so many words, as a coalition of 20 Tea Party groups did in a letter urging Sen. Lamar Alexander, a fairly moderate Republican from Tennessee, to retire.
“Unfortunately, our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which you have become famous,” the open letter reads. “America faces serious challenges and needs policymakers who will defend conservative values, not work with those who are actively undermining those values.”
It’s a remarkable statement. These activists aren’t saying that there are certain issues they hold dear and lines that must not be crossed, they’re saying that compromise in and of itself is unacceptable. Of course, compromise and bipartisanship are necessary to do anything in divided Congress, so these Tea Party groups aren’t just drawing a strong line, they’re categorically rejecting the importance of governing. Period.
The letter, which seems like a perfect distillation of the Tea Party at its most nihilistic, should underscore that any attempt to compare “the far right” to “the far left” is false equivalency. Throwing your hands up and “party polarization” on both sides is a cop-out, and an incorrect one.
Yes, both parties have become more polarized, but one more than the other. Republicans are more conservative than they have been in over 100 years, have fewer moderates than Democrats, and have changed more, political science research shows — and it’s only getting worse.
While 54 percent of Republicans told Pew last month that their party’s leaders in Washington should be more conservative, most Democrats — 57 percent — say their leaders should be more moderate. Just 35 percent of Democrats say the party should be more liberal.
“While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post,” Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution wrote in a Washington Post Op-Ed on congressional disfunction titled “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem.”
The current GOP is now well to the right of George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and even Richard Nixon.
What about the activist progressive left, the functional opposite of the Tea Party? Does anyone on the left say compromise is inherently wrong? “Never. Nobody with any credibility says that,” said Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America, the lefty grass-roots activist group started by Howard Dean.
Continue reading at: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/16/the_left_and_right_are_not_similar_another_reality_check/
