How am I supposed to feed my kids tonight?!?

[Publius]

Imo, there are a whole lot of republicans from whos cold dead hands you would have to pry their social sucurity and medicare benefits from, so it's not only a liberal thing. That just shows that "Republican" does not equal "conservative." In a sense (the sense of having more-or-less generally accepted the New Deal and Great Society programs) the majority of both parties are liberal now. And this also gets to the the reason why my final answer was "politicians." Even for many conservative politicians, the "politician" part (devoted to preserving their own power and influence) outweighs the "conservative" part (devoted to conservative political principles) when it comes to liberal programs that a majority of voters have come to accept as their entitlement.

[darth los]

That just shows that "Republican" does not equal "conservative." In a sense (the sense of having more-or-less generally accepted the New Deal and Great Society programs) the majority of both parties are liberal now. And this also gets to the the reason why my final answer was "politicians." Even for many conservative politicians, the "politician" part (devoted to preserving their own power and influence) outweighs the "conservative" part (devoted to conservative political principles) when it comes to liberal programs that a majority of voters have come to accept as their entitlement. It's funny you should say that because that was my Biggest problem with President Clinton. He sold out many liberal/democratic ideals in order to maintain his grip on power, so I know where you're coming from on that one. To your first point: that should be exhibit A on why we need more than 2 major political parties in this country. Both the reps and dems are comprised of such broad coalitions and factions whos respective interests often contradict one another. Ultimately, these factions get conflated to where the core principles that are so important to them get compromised/homogenized. And when you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. The end result? You have republicans trying to defend far right positions that they don't really agree with but they can't afford to piss off their constituency no matter how crazy their beliefs are. The same goes for dems who have to support a far left agenda no matter how impractical it might be, such as ending the two wars we're in, which President Obama is finding that out as we write this.