You've probably noticed that Democrats always seem to be in lockstep. It's as if there's a master control dictating how they think, and particularly, how they vote. Republicans on the other hand, seem out of control, so much so that progressives call the current list of presidential aspirants a "clown car."
Here a pretty good explanation of why that may be. "The Republican Party is a party of ideas; the Democratic Party is a party of interests," theorizes Christopher Chantrill in Why is the Democratic Party So Disciplined?
Mr. Chantrill cites John C. Goodman's Why Voters Vote, to wit:
The Republican Party has four factions, Matthew Dowd announced on This Week with George Stephanopoulos a few weeks ago. They are: the libertarians, the evangelicals, the Tea Party and the establishment. Notice that all four factions are defined by ideas. They are defined by how they think the world should be organized.
I'm not sure evangelicals should be considered a separate group since all politicians either are or pretend to be religious. And libertarians and Tea Party supporters have very similar ideas, so those two could probably be combined. That leaves the establishment against everyone else. There are some big differences between those two groups. And the point still holds that it's the ideas that distinguish them.
What about Democrats? Back to Goodman:
The problem is that the Democratic Party is not a party of ideas. It is a party of special interests and groups who respond to identity politics. When Clinton announced her candidacy, she carefully went down the list of groups she intended to target: women, minorities (read blacks), Hispanics, immigrants, the LGBT community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender), etc.
Each of these groups has something it wants. If Hillary convinces them she will deliver the goods, she'll get their vote. On the other hand, Republican voters are so diverse that no candidate will be able to satisfy them all. Some of them will have to vote for someone they don't like simply to try to alter the course Obama and Hillary want for the country.
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