Forums

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Spanky
Politics in America have always been really partisan, and compared to the eighteenth and nineteenth century politics, today's partisan fighting is very tame.

However, I think a big sea change happened when the Southern conservatives moved to the Republican party. Before that changed the partys were much more mixed. There were very liberal Republicans and very conservative Democrats. During that time, for ideological soul mates to work with eachother, you needed "bipartisanship". But once that move was made the parties became much more ideoligical homogenized and now all the ideological "soul mates" are in the same party. Plus, since the partys are more homogenized they are a lot easier to lead. Therefore, when a party is in the majority it doesn't need votes from the other side very much. So the party in power doesn't really need much from the opposition, and the opposition doesn't want to help the party in power because they want to be in power. Therefore, no cooperation.

This explains why Bill Clinton was so far to the left of LBJ.