A Party Divided

One of the things that always amuses and irks me is the way people make general, sweeping statements about the political parties: all Democrats are "liberal", all Republicans are "conservative", that sort of thing. In reality, one of the biggest failings of the two-party system is that people have to shoehorn their political ideologies into trying to match one of the two parties.

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are also misnomers, derogatory labels one can slap on someone of a competing ideology. "Liberal" has become a euphamism for "morally relativistic neo-socialist" (which is why the preferred term is now "progressive"), while "conservative" means "closed-minded rich Christian caucasian who confuses the Bible with the Constitution." Interestingly, many "conservatives" wear this badge with pride.

If you look at the actual breakdown of those who tend to vote Republican, however, you'll see several factions, some of whom tend to be at odds with each other. Many people actually belong to multiple factions, where the factions do not overlap.

1. Free-market libertarians. More than anything else, free-market libertarians believe that the market should speak for itself and everything else will fall into place. Government regulation is bad: the marketplace can decide matters for itself. The economy wants to be self-regulating, and economic instability is the result of government intervention.
2. Market protectionists. They share a lot in common with free-market libertarians, except that they feel the government has the obligation to protect national corporate interests. If American corporations are doing well, Americans are doing well. The biggest differences are that market protectionists support corporate welfare and regulation of imports by means of tariffs.
3. Moral authoritarians. More often than not, these are practicing Christians, who feel that it is the role of government to encourage moral behavior among its citizens. While separation of church and state is a vital cornerstone to the American form of government, they feel the nation's Christian heritage cannot be denied. They do welcome all faiths - as long as you believe in a God. This group also tends to be strongly in favor of a strong criminal justice system and the use of the death penalty, where appropriate.
4. Nationalists. In a nutshell, this group is the flag-waving pro-military faction who believe that a citizen's first duty is to his country. Internal dissent as to the nature of how the country should be run is fine, but you do not criticize this country, her soldiers or her leadership. America: love it or leave it.
5. Pro-life/anti-abortion advocates. I'm distinguishing this group from the moral authoritarians for two reasons, although there is a great deal of crossover. First, many members of this group are single-issue voters: there is no way any pro-choice candidate (or, for many, even a "soft" anti-abortion candidate) gets a vote from this group. This is probably the single largest single-issue faction out there. The second is that not all pro-lifers are religious moral authoritarians. There are many anti-abortion atheists out there. There are also many in this group who oppose capital punishment.

As you can see, core Republican voters actually hold a great variety of views and a great variety of points of emphasis, and some of these aspects are at odds with other factions.