Moving left, Moving right, Moving on

Micheal Totten raises again a question that has been getting tossed around for some time, especially around centrist circles, is the country "moving to the right?" He quotes Donklephant, who quotes the Village Voice quoting Fareed Zakaria saying, "in America the entire spectrum has shifted to the right. I still like the same kinds of people I always did-conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, call them what you will. But we’re an increasingly embattled phenomenon in a country with a president talking about intelligent design."

At first I felt like agreeing with Zakaria, I was once considered very much a conservative. As a high school student I went door-to-door for Richard Nixon's re-election (we won big, too.) I don't feel as if I've changed much politically (well, except I don't like Nixon all that much anymore) but the seats out to the right of me have filled up. In the 70's, people more conservative than me and my mates were old farts, "the squares" in the parlance of our older siblings. Now, I find myself challenged as a Republican by folks who were not born when I first registered in the "R" column. I expect that their parents were among the lefties tossing eggs at us as we rallied for Nixon and later Ford. Smug, a**hole liberals of the '70's raised a generation of smug, a**hole neo-cons in the "00's". (We quieted them nicely in 1980 too. Lovely election...)

(At a political discussion not long ago, the discussion turned (for some reason) to the boomer generation. A very young and very conservative fellow jumped up to express his complete disdain for the boomers who had "disgraced the country with their protest of the Vietnam war", or words to that effect. I felt obliged to remind him that baby boomers had also fought that war.)

Ah well, I'm happier in the center, it makes more sense to me, and I like the company better.

Totten has a different view of this "shift" hypothesis. He suggests that the country has moved on more than moved right. He means, I think, that the issues are changing and the mix of people shifts around to reflect the new political landscape.

I don’t think the country has moved to the right so much as the country has moved on. The world has changed since 1968. People who haven’t changed in the meantime aren’t stranded on the left so much as they are stranded in time.

I was going to disagree but in preparing my comments I find that I sort of agree with him. The handy left-right ruler we apply to all issues is fickle and almost arbitrary. New issues get sorted out in new ways and the parties shift around with them. I do think that the Dem-Rep and Lib-Con spectrums have aligned themselves much more in the last decade than in earlier times. Decades ago there were genuinely conservative Democrats about, quite a few, in fact. It wasn't just liberalism that made one a Democrat in those days. Class and ethnicity were very important, as well as regional factors. Today those folks have become Republicans adding a new cadre of voters who are working-class, ethnic, southern and patriotic to the party (it used to be just the "Wall Street Republicans" and "Main Street Republicans", with a few "Country Club Republicans" and was a more strongly libertarian party)

I certainly do agree with Totten's point about those "stranded in time." A good chuck of the Left, and a bit of the Right, are stuck in the old model, fighting the old foe, over the old issues. When I, and other Centrists, say that the Right vs. Left model is obsolete, we mean that the old rules no longer relate well to the new political conversation. Attempts to maintain the old outmoded divisions while adapting to the newer issues, mangles the sense of these terms. Liberals are rooting for religious fundamentalist forces that oppress women as brutally as any regime in history. Conservatives are calling for increased government intervention in the home and in schools. Not surprisingly, many of us are confused and disoriented. We've come to the center where we can get our bearings better and see things more clearly.