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When President Obama recently complained to news media executives about their ostensibly even-handed "pox on both of your houses" coverage of the partisan battles in Washington, it might have seemed like, well, a partisan shot from a Democratic president.
After all, his complaint was that the GOP had moved so far right, and intransigently so, that it was wrong to create a false "equivalence" by blaming both parties equally for the Washington gridlock. To a skeptic that comment, coming from a Democrat, sounded suspiciously partisan itself.
But while the president was making the kind of argument you would expect of the nation's top Democrat, he actually had the support of science — well at least political science research that maps that rightward GOP shift.
Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, with his collaborator Howard Rosenthal of New York University, has spent decades charting the ideological shifts and polarization of the political parties in Congress from the 18th century until now to get the view of how the political landscape has changed from 30,000 feet up. What they have found is that the Republican Party is the most conservative it has been a century.
In a recent conversation Poole, who's viewed by other political scientists as the go-to expert on this issue, explained that the data are very clear:
Of course some, and not just conservative activists, will be quick to point out that Democrats also have their take-no-prisoner liberals who aren't prone to compromise on their core issues, either.
Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institution who studies public opinion, is definitely of the pox-on-both-house camp:
Poole acknowledges that Democrats have contributed their share to the polarization of the political process, especially, he says, through their use of identity politics, appeals to race, ethnicity and gender.
Democrats have also contributed by losing House and Senate seats in the South where moderate Democrats have been replaced by Republicans. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans have continued to depart the scene, with Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine being just the latest.
Buttressing a point that Obama has sometimes made, this loss of moderates and further rightward movement by congressional Republicans would have been a challenge to navigate for even the biggest conservative hero of modern times, President Ronald Reagan. Poole said:
That said, Poole says the data are hard to deny; the polarization is largely due to how far and relatively quickly Republicans have shifted to the right end of the ideological spectrum. And he faults leaders of both parties for allowing the nation to get into a fiscal morass in which government spending on health care is unsustainable:
This isn't meant as a knock on Obama, Poole said. But he's not very optimistic about what an Obama second term would bring:
Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been In 100 Years : It's All Politics : NPR
After all, his complaint was that the GOP had moved so far right, and intransigently so, that it was wrong to create a false "equivalence" by blaming both parties equally for the Washington gridlock. To a skeptic that comment, coming from a Democrat, sounded suspiciously partisan itself.
But while the president was making the kind of argument you would expect of the nation's top Democrat, he actually had the support of science — well at least political science research that maps that rightward GOP shift.
Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, with his collaborator Howard Rosenthal of New York University, has spent decades charting the ideological shifts and polarization of the political parties in Congress from the 18th century until now to get the view of how the political landscape has changed from 30,000 feet up. What they have found is that the Republican Party is the most conservative it has been a century.
In a recent conversation Poole, who's viewed by other political scientists as the go-to expert on this issue, explained that the data are very clear:
Of course some, and not just conservative activists, will be quick to point out that Democrats also have their take-no-prisoner liberals who aren't prone to compromise on their core issues, either.
Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institution who studies public opinion, is definitely of the pox-on-both-house camp:
Poole acknowledges that Democrats have contributed their share to the polarization of the political process, especially, he says, through their use of identity politics, appeals to race, ethnicity and gender.
Democrats have also contributed by losing House and Senate seats in the South where moderate Democrats have been replaced by Republicans. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans have continued to depart the scene, with Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine being just the latest.
Buttressing a point that Obama has sometimes made, this loss of moderates and further rightward movement by congressional Republicans would have been a challenge to navigate for even the biggest conservative hero of modern times, President Ronald Reagan. Poole said:
That said, Poole says the data are hard to deny; the polarization is largely due to how far and relatively quickly Republicans have shifted to the right end of the ideological spectrum. And he faults leaders of both parties for allowing the nation to get into a fiscal morass in which government spending on health care is unsustainable:
This isn't meant as a knock on Obama, Poole said. But he's not very optimistic about what an Obama second term would bring:
Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They've Been In 100 Years : It's All Politics : NPR
