Exchanging Sides

Much has been made since the '90s that Democrats and Republicans have exchanged places on economic policy, at least to a degree, with Democrats acting more as budget hawks and Republicans losing their fiscal discipline. That argument is overstated, but it has some truth to it.

Michael Lind, co-author of the excellent The Radical Center, argues in this article that the two parties have changed places to some degree on their military doctrine. Neo-conservatives, he says, are more akin to Democrats like Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, who believed we "could afford both welfare and warfare," while Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon wanted to keep military spending from crowding out the private sector in resource competition.

I'm not sure what I think about this, but it's interesting, and again I think contains some truth.