right wing corporatism vs far right wing corporatism isn't polarized.
"They're both two sides of the same coin, we're doomed!"
Take off your tinfoil hat.
thanks for that well argued counter to my post, i now feel like i've been savaged by a dead sheep.
Look at sites such as ontheissues.org that list the actual positions of each politician. Look up some key politicians in our history from both sides, and then plot them on a chart. The American left and right are both shifting further and further away from the center.
Here's a political compass chart I posted in a previous thread of mine:
Left:
John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson: E -4, S -2
Bill Clinton: E -4, S -4
Barack Obama: E -5, S -6
John Kerry: E -7.5, S -8
Rocky Anderson: E -9, S -10
Right:
Richard Nixon: E 2, S 2
Gerald Ford: E 4, S 4
Ronald Reagan: E 4, S 6
Mitt Romney: E 2, S 8
George W. Bush: E 7.5, S 8
Rick Santorum: E 7.5, S 10.
and my point is this: if you're an actual believer in free markets, or in any variant of left wing ideology, you're seeing your viewpoints being marginalized. a lot of people seem to think we have a free market economy today - we don't. the government will prop up large corporations and so the market keeps centralizing into smaller and smaller groups of private cartels and oligopolies. the debate in american politics doesn't revolve around whether this is a tolerable state of affairs, it revolves around how best the government can protect these corporations. this is why i believe the tea party and the occupy movement aren't that different - the problem is, each of them are only seeing one side of the coin.
i can see yr. argument over social issues though, perhaps. if you're looking for a real polarization, that's the place to go, because even if there's a stalemate in congress over most of the issues (with small changes now and then, i.e. the repeal of dadt), the party bases are far more polarized. it's a cultural and geographical divide, which i suppose is bound to happen if you live in a country as large as the united states.
