They look down on their conservative foes as mere publicists who distort the evidence about poverty, do not know enough statistics, and do no serious research. Conservative experts generally have lived less exalted lives. They typically came up the hard way, with less education and more twists and turns in their careers. They are often less confident and skilled than their opposites. But, due in part to their less privileged origins, they understand popular sentiment about poverty, and this is their strength.
Liberals think of poverty as a material deficit that government can make good with new benefits.
Conservatives know that it is first of all a moral problem. The patterns of crime, unwed pregnancy, and nonwork that contribute to poverty are intensely unpopular with the voters. Conservatives are willing to confront those patterns as wrong, while liberals are not. This fact, more than any other, explains the conservatives recent political success. The elite conflict replays the battle of Cavalier and Roundhead from the English Civil War.