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The GOP today is dominated by two, related ideologies, the fundamentalists who want to turn the US into a Christian state, and the neocons, who regardless of their own religious belief, carry a war ideology about using US power to transform the mideast. While those ideologies are different, they are at this moment largely compatible, and allow the GOP to maintain a fairly sharp ideological focus.
In contrast, the Democratic Party includes a broad mixture of groups, often holding conflicting views. For most Democrats, (as for most Americans, and most Europeans) social programs are viewed as government policies funded from taxes on an underlying capitalist economy, in which we all have an interest in its continued success. But, there are a minority of socialists who want to eliminate that underlying economy, in favor of something radically different. There are also a minority of radical environmentalists who want to eliminate that underlying economy, in favor of something much lower tech and closer to nature. The latter two groups have a more natural ideological home in the Socialist Worker's Party or the Green Party, respectively. But like the free-market fundamentalists who uncomfortably ride with the GOP despite its continued failure to do anything more than give them lip service, many choose to ride with the Democratic Party, in the foolish hope that someday it will be America's socialist party.
Were that the only divide, the Democratic Party would be not much different from the GOP. But it isn't. On energy policy, there are those who think that current oil prices are the result of a conspiracy, and the government should move to make it cheaper. There are others who think current oil prices are the inevitable result of increased world demand and plateauing world supply, perhaps presaging peak oil, and that if the more sensible government policy would be a straight tax on each barrel of oil, to accelerate conservation and alternate energies. (There is yet a third group who don't seem to realize that these two views are contradictory, and these two policies at cross-purposes.)
The Democratic Party includes most civil libertarians. Being a civil libertarian, that in my view is one of its chief attractions. In opposition, it also includes a fair share of those who favor more protective laws in areas from pornography to riding motorcycles, and the socialists previously mentioned.
The minority of Americans who are secular have gravitated to the Democratic Party, because it is today the only effective opposition to the religious right, which now dominates the GOP. But that is a relatively small minority, perhaps only 15%. The majority of Democrats are religious. Some join with the secular group in pushing very strongly for the separation of church and state, and divorce of civil policy from religious belief. There are others who want religious liberals to stand up to religious conservatives.
There are Democrats who support Israel, almost blindly and without criticism. There are other Democrats who believe that Hezbollah is a legitimate resistance organization.
On each of the above issues, it's possible of course to point out that most Democrats fall on one side, and only a minority on the other. That then lends a tempting comparison to the GOP. That overlooks an important difference. The large group that dominates the GOP is its radical and vocal branch. It is the moderate Republican who is in the minority and marginalized. In contrast, the group that dominates the Democratic Party is its moderates, much to the disappointment of its various more vocal and radical groups. In the GOP, the wingnut fundamentalists can shape policy and elect Congressmen and Presidents. In the Democratic Party, the Greens are marginalized and Kucinich and Sanders are about the most the socialists can do.
I don't have a solution for this. The Democratic Party is still the home to sanity in American politics.
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