Which US political party has more Centrists?

[Unpoisoned Chalice]

Yeah, obviously Democrats. The Republican Party has a coherent platform for remaking American government/society, and Democrats are made up of those who oppose this, many of whom are very milquetoast/otherwise-small-c-conservative in their beliefs.

And what exactly is this "coherent platform for remaking American government/society?"

[Unpoisoned Chalice]

Yeah, obviously Democrats. The Republican Party has a coherent platform for remaking American government/society, and Democrats are made up of those who oppose this, many of whom are very milquetoast/otherwise-small-c-conservative in their beliefs.

And what exactly is this "coherent platform for remaking American government/society?"

To gradually lower taxes and repeal social services and regulations, causing (this is the crucial word: every right-wing American believes there is causation here, and that is why the platform appeals even to people who are not very well off) the economy to grow much faster and make everyone much better off than they are now. That is the platform in a nutshell, but there are numerous social attitudes that correlate with supporting it, most particularly on supporting gun rights (in polling in US states after 1990 or so, spikes for gun rights always precede spikes for fiscal conservatism), but also in religiosity and a general lack of trust for the institutions of American society.

Democrats are generally against this. Many actually want to create new social services and regulations, but of course under the present climate in public opinion this is impossible, and when a little bit was done in 2009-10 it was poisonously unpopular.

I like this as a summary of the GOP platform and the party's functional role in U.S. politics. What do you think would need to happen for the right to remake government and society? Perhaps my interpretation of what that would constitute is too expansive but I am unconvinced that modern conservatism is capable of supplanting liberalism politically or intellectually.   

[Unpoisoned Chalice]

Yeah, obviously Democrats. The Republican Party has a coherent platform for remaking American government/society, and Democrats are made up of those who oppose this, many of whom are very milquetoast/otherwise-small-c-conservative in their beliefs.

And what exactly is this "coherent platform for remaking American government/society?"

To gradually lower taxes and repeal social services and regulations, causing (this is the crucial word: every right-wing American believes there is causation here, and that is why the platform appeals even to people who are not very well off) the economy to grow much faster and make everyone much better off than they are now. That is the platform in a nutshell, but there are numerous social attitudes that correlate with supporting it, most particularly on supporting gun rights (in polling in US states after 1990 or so, spikes for gun rights always precede spikes for fiscal conservatism), but also in religiosity and a general lack of trust for the institutions of American society.

Democrats are generally against this. Many actually want to create new social services and regulations, but of course under the present climate in public opinion this is impossible, and when a little bit was done in 2009-10 it was poisonously unpopular.

I like this as a summary of the GOP platform and the party's functional role in U.S. politics. What do you think would need to happen for the right to remake government and society? Perhaps my interpretation of what that would constitute is too expansive but I am unconvinced that modern conservatism is capable of supplanting liberalism politically or intellectually.   

I actually think this is basically inevitable if you assume continuous conservative control of the judiciary. At the moment, the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and the US Senate (which confirms new members of the Court) has a substantial natural Republican advantage. (Ie, the GOP lost the popular vote by 4 points in 2020, but tied Senate seats, 50-50; in 2016, they lost by 2 points, but won 60-40, and so on and so forth). However, in 2022 Democrats did unexpectedly well in Senate races, which shows this kind of thing is not guaranteed.

In the Civil Rights era, the Supreme Court made numerous 'progressive' decisions which were very unpopular at that time (most notably Loving, legalizing interracial marriage), but it was uniformly the case that the public came around to their views after several decades.

More generally, I think there is a generally declining trust in government institutions in the United States which corresponds to a rise in 'movement conservatism' (Gingrich's victory in 1994 and subsequent currents which came from it), and that demographic trends suggest this decline in trust is likelier to accelerate than decelerate in the near future, which makes me think that the Democratic party is likelier to resemble the Republican party over time than vice versa. So the way conservatism could supplant liberalism politically is through control of the Supreme Court and declining trust in government; I substantially think this is already happening, with Dobbs having been a very visible sign of it.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'intellectually' -- at least by stereotype, academia in the United States has been dominated by what you might call the 'cultural left', internationalist and sympathetic to redistribution and disadvantaged groups in society, since something like the 1910s. I'm not sure that's likely to shift anytime soon, but I'm also not sure that it's really necessary. I think the influence of academia on society will decline as there are fewer young people and information is more broadly available, but this is something I've thought through less than the above.

Conservatives have placed a lot of trust in the Supreme Court and with good reason. The broad reach of judicial review makes it the most powerful single entity of the federal government. I'm not inclined to say that the current Court is likely to shape future public opinion in a rightward direction though. The Roberts Court has delivered Obergefell and Bostock in addition to Dobbs. An example of why I think the intellectual element in political struggles is so important is that the subsequent public acceptance of progressive rulings from the Warren Court was ultimately driven primarily by popular culture, journalism, and education. Conservative weakness in these three areas deprives the right of a critical source of power. Belief in the necessity of progressive social change has only grown stronger in recent years (which necessarily suggests state action) even as trust in government has declined.

The Republicans' aggressive strategy on judicial appointments and the anti-majoritarian features of the U.S. Constitution (two Senators per state, Electoral College, etc.) provide a basis for right-wing optimism regarding the future of America. However, the furthest I can see this is going is something akin to the 70s-90s pushback against Keynesianism: temporary and non-transformative. I don't see deconstruction of the administrative state or social reaction as attainable without a Copernican revolution in the minds of Republican politicians and the opinion professionals. The economic proposals coming out of the current Congress make it rather difficult for me to see the GOP as ready to govern.