Why do so many confuse political parties with ideology?

Question

For instance conservatives are Republicans and liberals are democrats. You can be a liberal republican or a conservative democrat. Who doesn't get that? It's not rocket science.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, it's symptomatic of what's wrong with society today. Everyone is so eager to paste a neat label on each other without really stopping to think about the fact that individual people have individual opinions. So, to many hard-line conservatives, as a liberal, I must automatically be a pot-smoking hippie who's constantly standing in line at the abortion clinic. As a conservative, to many hard-line liberals, someone would be a mindless Bush-worshipper. Problem is, too much of what these two ideologies actually stand for gets lost in people's translation of what they are. It's a shame, because people used to be able to respect one another's opinions. Now they're just calling for the death of anyone whose opinions don't mirror their own. It's actually a little disgusting, if you think about it.

Answer 2

Because it is terribly confusing. There are conservatives and neoconservatives, liberals and classic liberals. Any one of these could lean Republican or Democrat. And even if you do check out the Republican and Democratic Party Platforms, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Republican or Democrat that follows the ideals 100%.

Answer 3

Many get lazy in their use of labels. To give examples might help - liberal Republican - Bush (at least in terms of spending) - his dad was an even better example (tax and spend). Conservative Democrat - Lieberman (so conservative they wouldn't even nominate him) - more classic example - Truman. Many don't understand that a great deal of freshmen democartic congress members where voted in on their conservative stances, and that the Repubilcans lost the public confidence due to their betrayal of their conservative values (see Foley scandal). So there is hope as long as the liberal dems that are entrenched in the leadership of their party find their breed getting smaller and smaller. If you couldn't tell, I am a conservative who strongly believes in both parties of our great nation, as long as they are healthy and stay away from the extremes of the opposing ideologies.

Answer 4

They are use the economic and political terms conservative, liberal and neo-conservative interchangeably without regard to the appropriate meaning. People have a hard time understanding a political conservative is not necessarily the same as an economic conservative and vice versa.

Answer 5

because this sort of pre-labeling of people makes it easy to not listen to people, and that's critical when you want to serve only a small percentage of the population.

only lunatic fringe, but very politically involved groups on the very far right and left are very well organized - most of us centrists are just too busy to be very involved in politics.

so guys like mitt romney - a decent centrist republican, is desperately trying to make it seem like he never favored a woman's right to chose, sane gun control and gay rights.

you may ask why - and the reason is simple - the voters in south carolina think that way - so he kowtows to their beliefs in the hopes of winning this crucial early primary.

a centrist romney is a pretty decent candidate and frankly no one should care what a pissant state like south carolina thinks - but they have to - just like good centrist democratic candidates need to pretend that gay rights and abortion rights are the two most important things in the world to them - when in fact, they are trivial issues that have been used to wedge americans apart while politicians do nothing about them - lest they actually have to talk about real issues.

time to cut the crap and simply not let these weasels off the hook.

i'm sick of hearing softball questions from perfect looking fox and abc news anchors, while most americans wonder aloud why we should even care about these trivial issues when the world is falling apart around us.

it's up to us to always ask the tough questions - the news media is too worried about access to do their jobs any longer.

Answer 6

maximum of those coverage innovations are comparable to the British Labour social gathering, the centre left social gathering it incredibly is often stated as socialist. i'm specific there is not any social gathering in u.s. that comes even close to to those ideological ideals. extra desirable word to return to stay in the united kingdom then and choose for a Labour government after the Tory led coalition loses the subsequent election.

Answer 7

Ignorance caused by unions in government schools.

Answer 8

I suppose people like to believe in different things, so they bluff themselves.

Answer 9

This crowd won't understand what you're talking about.

Answer 10

Ignorance breeds ignorance. Then they tell their friends. Their friends tell their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on.