Growing partisanship is splitting America into two
President Obama vowed to “turn the page on the ugly partisanship in Washington” during the 2008 campaign, but for the most part found it impossible to do – and is now trying to work around Congress and entrenched partisan gridlock by imposing policies through executive orders.
According to a revealing new study, the political deadlock is not just about Washington: It reflects the sharpest ideological divide within the American public perhaps at any time in recent history. Democrats and Republicans are more deeply divided along ideological lines – and partisan rage and antipathy runs much higher than at any time in the past two decades, the report by the Pew Research Center concludes.
While these trends have been manifest in national politics for years, they’ve also had a profound impact on everyday Americans. People with strong ideological views in both parties tend to socialize and befriend others who share their views – to the exclusion of anyone else. They often make decisions on where to live based on those ideological considerations, while hardliners on both sides routinely impugn the motives of those who disagree with them.
“The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10 percent to 21 percent,” the study said. “And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished.”
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This profound shift reflects movement on both sides of the political divide, with more Republicans shifting farther to the right and more Democrats embracing far more liberal views. At the same time, partisan animosity has mushroomed to the point where partisans genuinely believe the opposing party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being,” the report states.
http://news.yahoo.com/growing-partisanship-splitting-u-two-191000316.html;_ylt=AwrBJSDk_plTxE0Amk3QtDMD
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