There used to be more conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans than there are today. In that environment, it was necessary to compromise and work across the aisle. Neither side was lock-step on most issues. Even Al Gore (or at least his wife Tipper) was in favor of putting labels on records. <\/p>\n
Today, the parties are becoming increasingly strident, and everyone is expected to toe the ideological line. <\/p>\n
Why? <\/p>\n
I had a long talk with Noman yesterday, and he had an interesting theory, which I’m merging here with some of my thoughts. <\/p>\n
Politics used to be the boring, mysterious stuff that happened at the Capitol. Then came CSPAN, which gave back-benchers like Gingrich the opportunity to grab some attention by picking fights and calling names. Suddenly, politics was both accessible and interesting. It went from “watching paint dry” to watching a fight. Drama and conflict became the path to success. <\/p>\n
One of the most visible fights was over abortion and the Supreme Court. Senators could no longer afford to approve qualified candidates. They were being watched. Failure to attack the other side was a sign of weakness. The folks back home wanted a fight. <\/p>\n
Now here’s the weird thing. What the folks back home actually want is legal but restricted access to abortion — no late-term abortions, but no restrictions on very early abortions either. The parties, on the other hand, took extreme positions in both directions, allowing abortion up to the minute of birth or wanting to ban all abortions. (Note that extreme doesn’t mean wrong.) <\/p>\n
Why did they go to the extremes? Perhaps for the same reason the news has. <\/p>\n
The old adage was to be middle of the road and attract the most people. Or at least don’t repel them. But somewhere along the line people learned that taking a side paid off. It’s better to have the fierce loyalty of 10 percent of the population than the tepid interest of 40. <\/p>\n
Again, the fight is far more interesting. Politics became drama. <\/p>\n
This same tendency is at play in other areas as well. If you don’t follow the latest fashionable nonsense, you get attacked … viciously. It’s no longer a virtue to have friends with different views. You’re not even supposed to eat with grandma if she has offensive opinions. <\/p>\n
It seems to me that a lot of independent factors, pointing generally in similar directions, have caused this slide towards extremism. <\/p>\n
The important question is this: how do we get out of it? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There used to be more conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans than there are today. In that environment, it was necessary to compromise and work across the aisle. Neither side was lock-step on most issues. Even Al Gore (or at least his wife Tipper) was in favor of putting labels on records. Today, the parties are … Continue reading “What caused our modern partisanship?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}