Radicalization of the Parties

I am so sick of the Common Wisdom that both parties in the US have become radicalized.  It's basically an article of faith among the "Third Way" crowd.  But it's a classic example of false equivalence.

Sarah Pailin, Michelle Bachman, and  Herman Cain are extremely radical- much more so than anyone I can think of in the Democratic party mainstream.  The equivalent to those politicians on the Left would be Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore- but those guys have no pull at all in the Democratic party. The list of crazy stuff said by Bachman, for example, could fill a book, and she won the Iowa Straw Poll!

Let me put it this way: think about both parties and their mainstream platforms in, say, 2000. I can name a half dozen major issues on which the Republican party has moved way Right (torture, religious diversity for Muslims, cap & trade/ environment, health care, progressive taxation, etc). Now think about areas in which the Democrats have moved Left- I can come up with one- Gay Rights/marriage/civil unions. That's it.  (Some people jump in with Health Care, in which Democrats passed a bill much less liberal than that proposed by the Clintons, with ideas drawn originally from Right Wing think tanks in response to ClintonCare. The only thing that makes it seem more liberal is that it succeeded in passing).

Obama has tried mightily to work from the Center, but every time he turns that direction the Republicans have responded by running 10 steps toward the Right.

Hey, maybe the radicals are right: maybe we need to ditch the entire modern welfare state and return to 1929 America. I'm not buying it, but that's what a huge chunk of the GOP is selling.

By the way, I recommend browsing through the Third Way website.  It's staggering- the position papers criticize the stale thinking of Left and Right, contrasting the Michael Moore position with the mainstream Republican position on every issue. In the economics paper, the authors quote Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman from the Left- two voices totally marginalized by actual policy-makers in Washington.  Then they go on to propose.... basically the exact position of the Obama administration.  Unbelievable- they want so badly to believe in their narrative that they miss what's right in front of them.