Investor’s Business Daily
Editorial
Partisanship:
Everyone knows that the country is more politically polarized than ever, but
most don't know why.
Data from the highly respected Pew Research Center
provides a definitive answer. It's because Democrats have moved sharply to
the extreme left.
The Pew report — titled "The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even
Wider" — is the latest in a decades-long series of surveys it has
conducted to gauge people's views on various key issues, including the size of
government, immigration, corporate profits, race relations.
The authors of the
report note the "divisions between Republicans and Democrats on
fundamental political values ... reached record levels during Barack Obama's
presidency. In Donald Trump's first year as president, these gaps have
grown even larger."
Given the way politics gets reported these days, it's
easy to conclude that the widening gap is the result of Republicans become more
extreme in their views.
That is, after all, a mantra among Democrats and the
press.
The GOP is the party of racist, sexist, xenophobic, right-wing
extremists, we hear over and over again, while Democrats are but humble
centrists.
The Pew data, however, make it clear that the
shift toward the extreme has happened among Democrats, not Republicans.
This can be seen in dramatic fashion when you look at where the center of each party was in 1994, and where it is today.
Pew used a 10-item scale of political values to determine ideological purity among those who claim affiliation with the two parties.
The results show that while the Republican center moved only slightly to the right over the past 23 years, the center of Democratic part shifted far to the left. (See the nearby chart.)
Take a look at specific value questions Pew asks and you
can see why.
Pew asks, for example, whether poor people have it easy
because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return. In
1994, 63% of Republicans agreed with this sentiment, as did 44% of Democrats.
This year, 65% of Republicans agreed — a 2-point increase
— while just 18% of Democrats did — a 26-point drop.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Democrats used to
believe that most people who want to get ahead can do so if they work hard.
Today, just 45% of Democrats believe this.
Among Republicans, the change was
negligible — it went from 73% in 1994 to 77% today.
How about the question of whether racial discrimination
is the "main reason many black people can't get ahead these days"?
In 1994, just 39% of Democrats and 26% of
Republicans felt this way.
That was 14 years before the U.S. elected a black president.
Now, after eight years of Obama in the White
House, 64% of Democrats say racism is the main reason blacks can't get ahead,
while 14% of Republicans do.
National defense?
Back in 1994, 44% of Republicans said the best way to
secure peace was through military strength. Today, that figure is 53% — an
increase of 9 points.
But on the Democratic side, the share who agreed with "peace
through strength" dropped from 28% to 13% — a 15-point drop.
Pew also asked whether "corporations make too much
profit."
In 1994, the gap between Democrats and Republicans on this issue
was 18 percentage points.
Today, it's 30 points.
In this case, the entire increase in
the gap came from Democrats. While 61% of them said in 1994 that corporations
make too much money, 73% now feel that way.
There's been no
change on the Republicans side — it's remained at 43%.
One issue where Republicans shifted further out to the
edge than Democrats was on whether environmental laws and regulations cost too
many jobs and hurt the economy.
But on one big social issue, Republicans have become far
more moderate over the years.
The Pew survey asks whether homosexuality should be
discouraged by society.
In 1994, 58% of Republicans and 42% of Democrats said
it should.
By 2017, the share of Republicans who felt that way dropped 21
points, in tandem with the decline among Democrats.
Of course, if you want to see how extreme Democrats have
become, all you need to do is look at who is now considered the soul of the
party — far-left liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren — or the fact that a
substantial number of Democratic lawmakers have signed onto Bernie
Sanders' radical "Medicare for all" plan.
Meanwhile,
conservatives couldn't even muster a majority of Republicans in the Senate to
repeal ObamaCare.
Democrats and their water carriers in the press are like
people on a boat that is drifting off to sea, but are convinced that it's the
land that's moving, not them.
