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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis astonishing chart shows how moderate Republicans are an endangered species
By Christopher Ingraham
Political scientists have known for years that political polarization is largely a one-sided phenomenon: in recent decades the Republican Party has moved to the right much faster than Democrats have moved to the left. As Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution has described it, "Republicans have become a radical insurgencyideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of their political opposition."
The data backing this claim up are pretty solid. The most widely-used measure of political polarization, a score of ideology based on voting developed by Kenneth Poole and Howard Rosenthal, has shown that the Republicans in the Senate and especially the House have drifted away from the center far more rapidly than Democrats. The chart below, taken from the most recent slice of their data released just last month, illustrate this pretty clearly:
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/02/this-astonishing-chart-shows-how-republicans-are-an-endangered-species/
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This astonishing chart shows how moderate Republicans are an endangered species (Original Post)
Quixote1818
Oct 2015
OP
Wilms
(26,795 posts)1. Which is why they should form a third party...
with Third Way democrats.
YabaDabaNoDinoNo
(460 posts)3. The 1% Party or The Corporate Party would be a good name for em
moondust
(19,993 posts)2. Nihilists or RW anarchists?
I can't decide.
The chart would seem to coincide with a backlash against the civil rights progress of the 60s-70s and the GOP's Southern Strategy further exploiting racism.
What makes it even worse is that gerrymandering has made some of them more or less untouchable by the more sane and sober elements of the voting public. They can do all the crazy shit they want and not worry too much about losing their seat.