Eisenhower Republican--what is it

[PufPuf23]

16. Rachel Maddow (circa 2010) self-identified as an Eisenhower Republican in terms of policy.

A lot of people look up to you as a sort of hero of the progressive movement, yet you come from a military family and seem to hold some views that aren't necessarily considered "liberal." Still, many conservatives stapled a scarlet "L" on you years ago and seem to have turned up their "blah-blah-I'm-not-listening" knob so it drowns out anything you might say that they might agree with. What do you make of this quasi-mythological status that's been bestowed on you, and where would you say your views actually hunker down in the political spectrum?

I'm not too much of an expert on what people think about me. It's hard enough to quantify the general perception of anyone—I think it's impossible to do it about yourself. That said, I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform. Our politics have drifted so far to the right now that, for example, no one believes there is a single, confirmable judicial nominee out there who is as liberal as the Supreme Court Justice he or she will replace—a Republican appointed by a Republican president in the '70s. Justice Stevens didn't become a liberal once he was on the Court—he maintained his moderate Republican-style views, while the Court (and the rest of our national politics) shifted so far to the right that he ended up on the Court's far-left wing, simply by standing still.

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