Chapter One

The elected leaders who run our government today are very conservative. On a left-right ideological spectrum in which the left champions a strong role for government in protecting the environment, regulating business, and providing economic security and the right supports a more limited role for government in these areas and champions private property rights, they are generally quite far to the right. They are not just far to the right of the Republican leadership of a generation ago. They are also far to the right of the programs and policy ideals established in the past three to four decades of bipartisan public policymaking. And most important, they are far to the right of the middle-of-the road American voter. Our nation's leadership is off center.

This is our view, but it is not simply our opinion. As we show in this chapter, overwhelming evidence points to a growing distance between the views of ordinary Americans (generally moderate) and those of American political elites (increasingly conservative). This divorce is itself revealing-and troubling. Whatever else elected officials are meant to do once in office, they are supposed to represent (not perfectly, of course, but broadly) the views of the voters in whose name they exercise power. For this reason, we generally expect that our nation's political leaders will try to be ideologically in sync with middle-of-the-road voters. We also expect that they will not shift dramatically in one ideological direction or another unless Americans do, too. We expect these things to hold true, but they do not.

The Great Republican Rig