The Revolt of the Republican Strategists - Ross Douthat

In which case the original sin of the strategist class wasn’t moral compromise or racial blindness but simple condescension: a belief that they didn’t need to take their own constituents seriously, that they could campaign on social issues and protecting the homeland and govern on foreign wars and Social Security reform and that it would all hang together. Which it did — until a demagogue came along who was ready to exploit the gap between promises and policy, and to point out that the Republican adults supposedly in charge of governing weren’t actually governing very well.

Listen, I’m not going to sit here with a straight face and tell you that either of the political parties in the US do exactly what they say they’re going to do, but the chasm between what the right says and what they do when they govern is vast, and is one of the many reasons I left the party behind 15 years ago.