moderate in the middle. conservative at the top, liberal at the bottom. republican presidents are more conservative up at the top. democrats broadly more liberal. over time, from ike to nixon and ford and from reagan to bush the first and up to bush the second, you see them moving up? republican presidents are getting more conservative over time. republicans getting more conservative. but here s the thing. so are are democrats. both of these lines are going in the same direction. they are all headed up the graph. republicans are getting more conservative by leaps and bounds, but democrats are chasing lbj was more conservative than kennedy. bill clinton was more conservative than jimmy carter. the supreme court, the republican presidencies and through democratic presidencies is getting more conservative.
if you look over time, the craziest hair on fire most extreme republican in 1975, which that is top arrow, that person s super crazy far right wing positions in 1975 are where the most moderate republicans are now. that is where the most liberal republicans are now. they have the positions that were far to the right of the republican party just a generation ago, that happened over one generation. again, partisan democrats over this time have stayed exactly the same. moderate democrats have gotten more liberal but basically the same. the republicans have gone off the charts. the most extreme liberals in the democratic party are as far away from the moderate position as the most liberal republican. so, on the supreme court, they are storming to the right. the presidency, storming to the right. congress, storming to the right, too. and in congress, that dynamic of storming to the right is important to see it. that dynamic of storming to the right is happening all on the right.
graph the more liberal you are. moderate in the middle. conservative at the top, liberal at the bottom. republican presidents are more conservative up at the top. democrats broadly more liberal. over time, from ike to nixon and ford and from reagan to bush the first and up to bush the second, you see them moving up? republican presidents are getting more conservative over time. republicans getting more conservative. but here s the thing. so are are democrats. both of these lines are going in the same direction. they are all headed up the graph. republicans are getting more conservative by leaps and bounds, but democrats are chasing lbj was more conservative than kennedy. bill clinton was more conservative than jimmy carter. the supreme court, the republican presidencies and
the presidency through republican presidents and democrat is presidents is also getting more conservative. the congress? shocker, this is from the same political scientist the university of georgia using the same measures of liberal and conservative, right? tracked this for both the house and senate, same bayic pattern both of them, easier to see with the house data. the basic idea here is that the middle line here, the middle line, the yellow line in the middle is set at zero, that is neither conservative or liberal, it marks moderate. the higher up you get the more conservative, the lower down you get the more liberal. obviously, republicans are more conservative they are up top, democrats up liberal, they are down below. the two lines up see on each side of the middle there, are the most moderate members of each party. those lines are more toward the middle, more toward the center. the lines at the very top and lines at the very bottom are partisan people.
the justice who had been there before. this doesn t mean that democrats always pick hard core right wingers, but overall, over time it has been a steady, deliberate march to the right on the supreme court. evidence even for democrats. similarly the presidency, whether political scientists in this country, a professor from university of georgia is the date that we ll show, when political scientists in this country track the liberalness and conservativeness of politicians, you get a graph. it looks confusing, it s simple and totally makes sense. this is a graph about moderation. you see the dotted yellow line down the middle? that is moderation. that is the line that indicates neither liberal nor conservative, that means moderate, that is the center in terms policy positions. the further up on the graph is the more conservative you are, the further down you get on the graph the more liberal you are.