President Obama touched on the right-ward drift today in his speech. He outlined how his positions on healthcare (the individual mandate), the budget (returning to Clinton era revenues), and climate change (cap and trade) were all Republican ideas. Now, the far-right is mainstream right-wing and centrist ideas are demonized as socialism.
Republican /=/ right wing, as I've said before. But you're missing my point. What social issues have conservatives had major victories on the last 30 years, other than maybe 'law and order'? Banning abortion, gay marriage (not even a conceivable serious issue 20 years ago now taken as a given for everywhere at some point in the future), immigration reduction/balancing (never mind amnesty), affirmative action, etc. The hard-left direction is pretty obvious. Economics, to the extent you can even separate them, aren't really much different either. Just look at "moderate" Bob Dole, who advocated abolishing whole departments, and compare him to Mitt Romney who is supposedly running "to the right."
Republican does equal right-wing in modern political discourse, by and large. You're correct, social conservatism is a losing position by its very definition. But I interpreted your OP as speaking to a wider range of issues than "social" ones.
