Americans Are Increasingly Segregating Themselves in Ideological Enclaves

[JHB]

9. Part of that is switching parties rather than ideologies, and another part...

...can be attributed to the prevalence of scorched-earth demagoguery and its promotion.

For the first part: The Republicans wooed Dixiecrats and have marginalized those politicians deemed insufficiently-conservative from their ranks. "Rockefeller Republican" is a term of scorn and an accusation of quisling-hood, which pushed some into the Democratic column or independent. The Southern Strategy removed one of the historic factors that caused the intra-party mixes of ideologies.

The other part is demagoguery, most of it also fostered by conservatives. The strategies for conservatives to take control of the Republican party and to defeat the Democrats and Democratic programs was to foster and mobilize anger -- over guns, over sex (/abortion), over taxes, over social issues -- to pry apart the Democrats' New Deal coalition. They didn't necessarily create the anger, but they were adept at stoking it and encouraging it to be directed politically in certain directions.

Once you've created or enhanced the view that the "other side" is pure evil, how can you compromise. How can you work and live next to people who (you think) want to destroy the country?