Building a base of moderates and corporations who are basically paid off via whatever ridiculous spending they sign off on allows them to go hard in the paint (as my JV basketball coach might say) on foreign policy. Also, I mean, even Nelson Rockefeller was considerably anti-communist while being for the most part liberal (not to be confused with genuinely "left-wing", and except for drugs, of course) domestically. It basically creates a "big government" ponzi scheme wherein money is flushed out of the treasury and into both wars and domestic spending, making voters content enough to continue signing off on whatever their leadership is doing. Winning candidates of the right have been using this playbook since at least Nixon, probably Eisenhower. I mean, did even Reagan ever really threaten the New Deal, or even legalized abortion?
Yeah, basically it pleases as many interest groups as possible.
The George W. Bush presidency would have been a better example were it not for the divisive lip service to SoCon causes and the fact that he was so intent on making people less supportive of big government by picking incompetent cronies to run everything.
My assumption for the time being would be that Dubya abused the Nixon Doctrine, and has ruined it, at least for the right. If or when the GOP re-emerges victorious will be the time to test that hypothesis. I do hope it's right, though I'm not entirely sure what it would be replaced with. Anything too actually conservative ("conservative" in the sense of actually conserving this country, not its modern, warped definition) is out of the question for reasons of electability and modernity, so they'll have to think of something.
