An interesting article - http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-realignment-partisan-political-party-policy-democrats-republicans-politics-213909?cmpid=sf
I've been thinking about how incompatible various political ideologies are, even though they are stuck under a party umbrella due to our two party system. Not sure I entirely agree with the analysis here, but I liked that the author was pointing this out.
I've actually been thinking what parties we would have if we had a parliamentary system. That is, the Republican party could actually be divided into fiscal conservatives, christian conservatives, libertarians and (I suppose, based off the article) nationalists. Not sure business interests and free trade are a separate strain or are mixed in with the others. Christian conservatives are not actually about limiting government, at least when it comes to the transgender bathroom bill and other examples I could give. That kind of conflicts with the libertarian ideology.
I actually didn't bother writing the post on this because I've got a harder time delineating the Democratic side. Liberals, progressives, labor, social justice...
Not ready to write that one.
Of course, I also was thinking of writing about the problem with getting too focused on ideology in the first place. When studying for my Master's in Public Affairs, we talked about evidence based policies. To me, that's crucial. If evidence shows something supports our goals (what goals being another far too long discussion for right now) then I don't care whether it fits neatly into any of the existing frameworks. If privatization works, I'm for it. If privatization doesn't (some public services don't really have a competitive private sector in the first place, so you're just adding another layer of inefficiency), then I'm not.
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