Democrats act in a purely partisan fashion sometimes, and, I happen to believe, more often than Republicans, at this point in time. But it is not as if either party has been that pure, historically. After all, we have to bear the cross of Watergate.
I think you are right, if you take the litmus tests of race or the treatment of women as individuals, most conservatives would have been considered liberals in the early sixties. In point of fact, "neoconservatives" were Cold War liberals and socialists, originally, who became alienated with the dominance of the Democratic Party's left wing, moved right, and, some of them, bailed to the Republican Party, like William Bennet and Jeane Kirkpatrick. However, the country as a whole has not especially moved left. It is almost impossible for someone to get elected to the presidency, for example, if the label "Liberal" is pinned on him, which is why Clinton, one of the founders of the Democratic Leadership Conference, a moderate group, and Al Gore, another founder, were the last two Democratic Presidential candidates, and Leiberman, the most conservative non- Southern Democrat in the Senate, was Gore's running mate......... |
