politics

The voters do believe that and many try to be that to some extent.

But they give carte blanche to lib politicians, almost all of whom (at the national level) are basically indistinguishable from conservatives of 10 years ago, in part due to what Kaplya describes; they are trying to outflank conservatives from the right, as they always have, but as conservatives get more and more unhinged, so too do dems shift further and further out. And voters desperately try to justify it all, because they don't know what else they can do besides vote.

Look at the rhetoric around immigration now, just 10-15 years ago it was about having sanctuary cities and how inhumane Bush had done it, now liberal politicians just flat out tell the press that 'we have border problems' and 'we need to securitize it', literally 3-5 years or less after they talked about how deranged Trump had been when he was doing the exact same stuff.