Democrats, Republicans have undergone a role reversal

For most of my life the rule of thumb was that the GOP was the ideological party and the Democratic Party was the coalitional party.

This always was an overgeneralization. Democrats had an ideological perspective, and Republicans had coalitional interests. But from the New Deal to around the end of the Bush years, it was generally true. I used to think it had to do with the superiority of conservative ideas, but I'm coming around to the view that