Rachel I disagree to a point about the Dems stayed the same while the Repubs moved far to the right. Dems have moved far left on some issues such as Homosexuality, transsexualism, Lesbianism as well as birth control. There was not a liberal consensus on abortion and morning after pills that existed back then. To give those Dems that wanted to stay central to humanistic or moral policies had to create a group called the Blue Dog democrats. Those Blue Dogs who want to stay central are attacked by far left Dems as not being liberal enough, in other words extreme like them. The Blue Dogs was formed in 1995 during the 104th Congress to give more conservative members from the Democratic party a unified voice after the Democrats' loss of Congress in the U.S. Congressional election of 1994. Blue Dog Coalition membership for the 112th Congress is 26 seats, down from 54 seats in the 111th Congress. This show the move in the Democratic party from conservative towards being more extreme liberal is obvious.

I don't understand how it is missed. Actually the whole abortion, contraceptive, women's health thing is clearly an attack on Religious Freedom and Women's Rights. The only basis for imposing these laws is "religious" Similarly this was pointed out in the findings on Prop 8. So in the Blunt amendment (what a great name for it---) The state is supporting individual employers to impose thier religious beliefs on all their employees---none of which has anything to do with their work.

Take a look what does the Catholic Church, Mormon Church, Southern Baptist Church Missouri and Wisconsin Synods of the Lutheran Churches and the so called Evangelical Churches have in common---they all share institutionalized second class participation for women. That is what they now want to impose on everyone. The message is clear--women can not be trusted to make good decisions for themselves, their families and others.

When there are a significant number of women serving as Cardinals in the Catholic Church and similarly in the others I might believe this is not their agenda. Mainline Protestant churches have over the passed 50 to 60 years moved on from this ---The UCC Congregationalists---did it long before. Christian Church--DOC and the Episcopal church both have women as their chief officers.

So this is not a Christian or Biblical issue it is a church political issue being imposed on everyone. Based on a religious groups personal religious beliefs. It is clearly anti scientific, anti medical practice. The evidence is clear this is an issue of the hierarchy (all male) in these churches and not the membership. Some say as high as 99% of Catholic women use contrceptives.

So through these laws---based solely on religious beliefs of some not even all of the same religion---it is imposed or could be imposed on everyone.

We tried that with prohibition--we tried it before with abortion---we have historical proof of how both those worked out.

1) Isn't there something in the first amendment that gives a woman a "say" in what's done to her?
It seems to me there should be.

2) This business of someone in power appointing someone to govern with absolute power, to change and
make laws just on his say so, is reminiscent of the Nazis and the third Reich . In fact this whole idea of the Republicans all following their leader(s) and responding in unison, without thinking for themselves or daring to oppose, falls into this same category.

The lurch to the right started with Reagan, got rolling with talk radio and sped up with Fox News. Multiply that by two because the nation in general is getting older, with boomers retiring and falling pray to the fear-mongering.

http://www.commentous.com/f/w/citizenone

Bush appointee Roberts has destroyed the pretense that the supreme court is not a political organization.

Gentlemen - I believe you have our UNDIVIDED attention. The women of this country see these actions for EXACTLY what they are: TAKING AWAY A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE .... and throwing up any barrier they can to interfere with those rights....

ONCE AGAIN - for those who have great difficulty in understanding .....

This has NOTHING to do with Freedom of Religion .... if you work directly for a church - they can discriminate however they choose - according to their barbaric theocracy...

HOWEVER - if that religion chooses to operate a business FOR PROFIT - in the PUBLIC SECTOR - they need to operate within the laws of the land.... and they have NO RIGHT to impose their barbaric theocracy on their employees.....

Those forefathers - who are repeatedly falsely characterized by those who would like to rewrite history - insured a Freedom From Religion as well as a Freedom of Religion .....

It is just like the movie "Mars Attacks" - the aliens keep saying 'we come in peace' while they vaporize the humans.... this is the same .... they have one mantra .... 'it's about religious freedom' - while it is really about trying to take away the rights that generations of women before us fought to have -

TAKE THE VOTE on the BLUNT AMMENDMENT - WE WILL BE TAKING NOTES ..... ANYONE WHO VOTES TO TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS NEEDS TO BE VOTED OUT OF OFFICE ......

The WOMEN of this country will rise to the occasion - the futures of all our Mothers - Wives - Sisters and Daughters will not be subjected to the uneducated religious extremism of these zealots ..... WE WILL TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK ..... FROM THE RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS!!!!!!

All this talk about social issues and the lurch to the right. Let's not forget the power-grab from the Republicans on economic issues:

• Make Bush Tax Cuts permanent
• Raise Taxes on Working-Class citizens (anyone making less than $100,000/year)
• Get rid of Pell Grants and affordable higher education for the Working Class
• Get rid of the ability to unionize - work-place safety, 40-hour work week, overtime, etc.
• Get rid of the minimum wage (Bachmann)

From what I've observed, the trend to the right began when students who had graduated from universities like Regent (1978) began entering politics. What we're seeing now is a result of a generation of home-schooled kids who go on to graduate from Christian colleges that cater to them. Since they've spent their entire life isolated, they really don't connect with common people. They get into office to advance the agenda that their isolated education has set for them.

Unfortunately they tend to get elected, like our Senator Mike Lee, because voters with a simplistic view of life assume that devout people are "good" people. In Utah, if a candidate is a graduate of BYU, they have a stronger resume and are more likely to get elected than someone who graduated from the UofU. In the past, that hasn't been as big an issue as it is now. The religion based schools are becoming very rabid in their teachings.

People need to be aware that this trend stems from end-time prophesies. In Utah we have Joseph Smith's "White Horse Prophesy" that predicts that when the Constitution is "in tatters" (Glenn Beck & Orrin Hatch) and the US in on the brink of collapse, a Mormon will rise up and save the country. That's why all of the people at Romney's Nevada acceptance speech had the "Nevada Believes!" signs.

The whole issue with birth control and abortion stems from the fear that the baby Jesus will be aborted. Mary was an unwed 12 year old mother and if she lived now, she would probably have an abortion. The screaming, crying and hair tearing that was going on outside of the abortion clinics in the 80's, wasn't just about babies in general. They were mourning the death of the baby Jesus. When people walked up to me and my friends and testified about this issue to us, we laughed at them. It's not really a laughing matter any longer. They are very serious and very determined.

That liberal-conservative dimension graph of the House (1879-2011) that Rachel showed is amazing, but it can be presented in ways that make the rightward swing of the GOP more immediately striking. An upward swing in a line graph probably doesn't strike the average person (especially the average business person) as odd. After all, lines that go up are usually good, right? What about switching the right-left orientation of the graph so that conservative is below the moderation line, and liberal is above the line. This mirror image I think would jump out a lot more to the casual viewer.

And just in case this smacks of a biased orientation, what about turning the graph on its side, and tracking the dimension vertically over time. With this orientation, you can show liberal on the left and conservative on the right, with the rightward swing clearly and intuitively visible.

I think this is the most important story in American politics in a lifetime. Rachel, please keep explaining to America (with graphs and whatever other evidence you can find) that that THERE IS NO MIRROR IMAGE HERE. And good on you for calling bullpucky on the lazy punditry that labels this trend "polarization." As you say, it's actually a generation-long project, and nobody else in the mainstream media is saying so.

The move of the Republican Party further and further to the right coincides with the rise of what some call the Theocratic Right. The Theocratic Right is composed of Christian Nationalist, Christian Dominionists, neo-conservative Catholics and Glenn Beck-ien Mormons. The Theocratic Right has been working for a generation to weaken the Federal Government to the point where virtually all governmental functions are under the control of the individual state constitutions - thus returning government to something approaching the Articles of Confederation.

Their first step has been to undermine the First Amendment. Their tactics include state bills on personhood, Arizona's proposed bill on swearing, Virginia's attempt at censoring e-mails, legislation that allows religious and political tests for adoption, and legislation that supports church schools and home schooling - where the content taught students can be carefully controlled. If they can get a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court on any of these areas, the First Amendment Rights will be under the control of the individual states - not the Federal Government. Technically, it says "Congress shall pass no laws..." it does not prohibit the states from passing them.

States would be free to once again pass or enforce existing religious test for holding political office, free to collect church tithes, free to distribute those tithes to approved churches, free to give churches the right to administer and enforce their own church law over civil law - all things that were done in this country prior to the Constitution.

The Theocratic Right believes that a Theocracy already exists.

There is no separation of Church and State.

The Bible is the common standard of law for both church and state.

The church should hold court and be a real government.

Democracy is to be rejected as the "tyranny of the fifty one percent"

The Bible does not guarantee human rights - except the right to death.

A mutual cooperation should exist between big business, the church, and government. As such they oppose environmental regulations, work safety regulations and unions and support the privatization of Social Security.

All federal "welfare" programs should be shifted to church controlled charities.

Those of approved Christian faiths have "rights" - non-Christian faiths have "privileges" .

The Theocratic Right also oppose public schools and colleges with their lack of religious instruction and prefer charter schools (most have religious links) and home schooling where content can be controlled.

They encourage the creation of religiously conservative law schools to counter the ACLU and provide future judges and politicians with a Biblical view to law and government.

Contraception is discouraged - obviously all abortion should be illegal - mothers are discouraged from working outside of the home.

No-fault divorce should not be allowed - adultery and other forms of fortification should be punished.

======

There is much more - I suggest the search for the following topics and people:

David Barton (pseudo-historian sourced by many of the Theocratic Right) , Christian Nationalism, Theocratic Right, Christian Theocracy, Christian Reconstructionism, or Christian Dominionism.

You might also look up The Republican Party's Vision For The Family: The Compelling Issue Of The Decade by Ronald F. McDonnell, and From The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action by George Grant, published in 1987 by Dominion Press.

On a more positive note - consider reading

Alexis de Tocqueville's - Democracy in America in the1830's -Vol 1 Chp 17 - read it all - not just the out of context quotes made by David Barton.

The Theocratic Right do not represent all evangelical Christians - many Baptists still remember the history of religion persecution in the Colonies and remember that it was Roger Williams (1630's) who voiced the need of a “wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world” to protect minorities from majority religions who used the power of the state to enforce church law.

The Theocratic Right is quite serious, has a strategic - long range plan and poses a credible threat to both real democracy in this country and to real Christianity.

Did any of you bother to try to understand how "Conservative" "Liberal" measurements were made? The graphs had DW-Nominate written all over them- any idea or explanation given for what that modeling software does? (No? see wiki article)

Nate Silver loves it, the NYtimes and WaPost use it. It is heralded as the next best thing since sliced bread. But let's move beyond proofs based on appeal to authority. What is it?

The idea in general is to apply Quantitative analysis to Behavior. The recent meltdown demonstrated how problematic this is for the financial domain even though the data is highly numerical. The fundamental fallacy of the approach as described by quantitative analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb has to do applying naïve and simplified statistical models in complex domains. In the financial world, there was no way to quantify fear and other non rational factors. So the models ignore them. In more technical jargon, the models assume players have utility functions which are bell-shaped (normal distribution). Taleb (with backing by his mentor, the mathematician Mandelbrot) points out that use of the normal distribution produces fraudulent results. I suppose consideration of why this is so is beyond the scope of this post, but it gets to our strong preference to grasp any map- even a wrong map of reality as preferable to having no map at all. Taleb refers to it as the problem of platonicity.

Quants like Taleb advise to take these Quantitative models with a huge dose of salt. If they were hopeless for modeling risk on Wall Street, at best we should not place much stock in them at demonstrating anything more than general trends.

Ok. That is the modeling software. Now take a look at how they take measurements. I didn't go into it with much detail but give me a fricking break. The authors of this system claim that we can compare a roll call vote on something like handgun waiting period to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. And how do you score the bulk of legislation that is not single issue, but amalgams- like defense authorization that tells DOD to generate gigawatts of power from green sources, but also tells them they can't close Guantanamo?

Not only is the modeling software suspect, the data extraction they are performing is suspect.