🧵 Reactionaries need conservatives to support them to gain power. And they do this principally by lying that the left "are the real extremists."
Below is a chart you might see often. It's worth considering. Besides the study's problematic questions, it's not measuring politicians. It should be.
The ideologies of citizens are very changeable, so asking them what they are or trying to assign ideologies to them does not tell you anything about trends.
What matters is the party leaders' views, the politicians. They are the ones making the policies and having real ideological positions.
In political science, there's a longstanding metric for this called DW-NOMINATE. It's been validated and used for decades.
It shows the opposite of the graph in the first post. And it matters a lot more.
Before Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party, liberals and liberal conservatives used to be quite common in the Republican party. Think people like David Gergen or Connie Morella. They were canceled by the far right, and these people became Democrats.
They are why the grassroots looks more liberal.
There are lots of self-described "Reagan conservatives" who feel like liberals in Trump's Republican Party even.
The Republican party deliberately purged its more liberal elements. Everyone knows this is true based on their own knowledge of history. There has not ever been a powerful Republican counterpart to the Democratic Leadership Council.
We all know this to be the case. But misleading right-wing activists want people to forget that.
Reactionaries use the meme below constantly. I'm sure you've seen it. The actual politicians' records show that it's a lie.
Here's the source link for you to paste in next time you see someone using the deceptive meme below. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/
/end
Its the Obama - GOP political cartoon clumsily 180ed by an antisocial intern.
Matthew Sheffield
SatelliteOfLove
Lucy Weir