I think Antonio is on to something with regard to what is annoying you, Simfan24, but I'd put it a little differently.
Clinton wasn't a left-winger. He helped found the DLC and then in his first presidential campaign dragged the Dems kicking and screaming to the center. He "triangulated" on purpose. He did get beat a few times, but this strategy was, particularly after Congress changed hands in '94, pretty successful; it got him reelected and produced lots of legislation he was able to pass.
Obama has never been a left-winger either; he has always been mostly a centrist-reformer type, but more a conciliator than someone with his own legislative agenda. Now, the GOP does not want to get hooked by the triangulation strategy again. So, we get this dance where, with policies which you rightly note are fundamentally of GOP invention, when Obama moves one step toward them, the Pubbies move two steps right, and if Obama moves two steps toward them, the Pubbies move four steps right. It all ends up being a pretty ugly dance in terms of crafting good legislation. But, in terms of election politics, it does something for the GOP, it highlights differences that feed into a polarization narrative, and that gives something for people to choose between when they go to the polls.
The last real left-winger president was LBJ. In terms of fiscal and government policy (not necessarily social policy), the "center" of U.S. politics has been moving steadily right ever since.
If fiscal policy had really swung so far to the 'right' since then we wouldn't have had such massive entitlement expansions under Reagan and Bush or various departments growing (or in some cases, being created) or the federal register continuing to balloon or any of the subsidies and tax breaks and bail outs enacted since 1981. Those are not 'small government' or 'free market' policies.
Here's what I think really happened in the '70s and after wards: the 'right' for all intents and purposes gave up on 'smaller government' as anything other than a buzzword/euphemism. They still throw it around but the bulk of the Republicans knows the voters don't really want any meaningful cuts in
their programs, just for future beneficiaries at most. And they know that wall street and the rest of the two-party system's donors would never go for rolling back any of the above policies in any meaningful way. That's just not how you do business, especially when you're in perpetual campaign mode and rarely read any of the bills you sign anyway.
So instead of cutting government spending or RESTORING THE CONSTITUTION111 or any of the usual libertarian-sounding buzzwords the Tea Partiers and other people throw around the Republicans and a very large amount of
Moderate Democrats focused on racialized issues like welfare or 'law and order' (drug war, death penalty, etc.) or the modern war on terror... Because they were crowd pleasers and gave them more power to regulate people's lives and make more money. And both sides basically decided to leave affirmative action alone because it has real PR use and having a government that looks 'like america' is more important than one that actually believes in what we were founded on.
