Our political tug-of-war

I have been trying to argue (offline) that our political dialogue has a false sense of left v. right, in that people lose track of just how far to the right we have gone. In that context, when a conservative Democrat speaks, it isn't representative of the far left, where as most Republican Senators are much closer to the far right--and there are practically no moderate Republicans (in office, I mean) left.

Anyway, I wrote this very flawed analogy and thought I would post it to see what others thought. (My offline recipients have yet to respond, and I am impatient.)

Imagine the political landscape as a tug of war played out on a football field. (This is a very limited analogy with numerous holes (first and foremost a tendency toward the two dimensional left v. right, for example) but (in my head at least) offers some possible uses.) In this analogy, the political landscape (tug of war) is a limited set of people or ideological stances. In other words, not everyone on the field gets to grab the rope. The bulk of the participants are within 20 yards of the 50 yard line, with smaller and smaller numbers as you near the goal lines. Obviously, those in the middle of the field represent moderate beliefs on the role of government, taxation, etc. (just one of the reasons this is flawed in that some people could occupy multiple places on the field simultaneously--but bear with me!). Those near the goal posts are the more radical of the left/right spectrum.

I would suggest that, within this limited analogy, the political landscape has migrated from the left to the right in an almost rugby "scrum" style (or little kid soccer where the mob follows the ball around the field). During the 20s, the center of that rope was probably right of center, but during the New Deal, moved back over the line to the left. I would further suggest that the center of that rope remained left of center (perhaps just barely) through the end of the 60s, and even during the Nixon administration had moved only slightly to the right of the center line. Carter may have tried to move the scrum back to the New Deal, but by this time, the majority of the participants pulling on the rope were right of center. That rope continued to move to the right through Reagan, GHWB, and only slightly moved back toward the center under Clinton, and never crossed the mid point during his administration. In many ways, Clinton's economic and foreign policy are very similar to GHWB in most ways.

But under Bush, the entire scrum moved far right, to the point that those radicals on the far right--hard core libertarians, neo-cons, and anti-government types actually got to grab the rope. They had always been there, writing their screeds and ranting their rants. But under the previous administrations, they didn't actually get to touch the rope. Sure, a finger or two under Reagan and HWB, but the bulk of those on the rope were of the moderate or pragmatic wing of the party. But under Bush, for the first time in American history (or at least the modern Presidency) the people with the best grasp on the rope on the right side of the tug-of-war, were those people on the 10 or 15 yard line to the right. Grover Norquist, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Ashcroft, etc., all represent the more conservative and radical elements of conservatism.

By comparison, I don't see the truly radical left ever getting really much more than a finger on that rope, and none of them since the 1960s. Even those who got to play then were not advocating government run industries, or even a radical challenge to market capitalism. I would include in that, by the way, the Roosevelt administration who I believe saved capitalism from those fringe elements who had their best chance during the depression years. But FDR and the bulk of his advisors believed in market capitalism.

So, again, in this limited little analogy, I think you can see how I approach this current situation. When Republicans gave part of the rope pulling to those on the far right, they have skewed the game. The task, I think, for the Democrats is to get that scrum moved off the right wing goal line and closer to the middle.