People so often say that you should confuse liberal/conservative with Democrat/Republican because there are supposedly liberals and conservatives in both parties.
Who are they then? I’m not talking about moderates, mind you. I’m wondering which Republican is arguing for higher taxes and complaining that the stimulus was too small, and I want to know which Democrats are arguing for tax cuts and “drill, baby, drill.”
I realize that people cross over on certain issues from time to time, but I’m not sure which politicians can really be considered liberal republicans, for example.
I understand also that “conservative” and “liberal” are loaded words, because a fiscal conservative can easily be a social liberal. But there seems to be a general belief that despite these discrepancies, one’s voting record can be looked at on a grand scale and be deemed capital-L liberal or capital-C conservative.
No answer, but in this two party system I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw it in comparing local elections between, say, New York vs Texas. In other words, I wouldn’t be surpised if there were some local Texas Democratic politicians who were more conservative overall than some local New York State Republicans. Because if there is a big enough gap in the “center”, someone from the other party will fill it in this two party system of ours.
But I imagine at the national level, party discipline will prevent this because the politicians need the party’s help raising funds and scratching each others backs on projects. Which is true at the local level too, but when your local party is already shifted a bit to the left or right it matters less.
Most Republicans from New England are pretty liberal, such as Lincoln Chafee (who admittedly is no longer a Republican). Look also at Gov. Douglas of Vermont and Sens. Snowe and Collins of Maine.
I think California is another example: maybe the highest profile cases will all be Governors, where you can represent a whole chunk of relatively liberal or conservative populace by being just a bit to their right or left, but skewed relative to the overall US population.
I would find it hard to imagine that a Democratic governor from Georgia, for example, would be as willing to regulate the environment as Schwarzenegger.
You’ll find the “Blue Dog Democrats” in the South and West primarily.
Frankly, you have to address this issue by issue. Environmentalism may be a liberal issue, yet it isn’t much favored by Democrats from Appalachia.
Does this make Robert Byrd any kind of conservative though? He doesn’t fit that mold well at all.
You could say the same about lots of issues - gun control, abortion, farm subsidies, and the like. The fact that neither party imposes much discipline on its members for breaking what stands for orthodoxy means a lot here as well - politicians are given quite a break of party positions will put them into trouble with their constituents.
So with all of that, we could make quite a list.
Apparently I’ll be the first to point out the liberals do not favor higher taxes. They tend to favor government services and paying for them.