> That might suggest bias, but I'd like to give you the benefit of doubt.

No need to doubt: I have a more nuanced view of left politics because I'm left biased and spend more time consuming left content and commentary. This is a politics post. Everyone is biased. Politics is the mind killer and all that. This includes self-described apolitical, can't we all just get along CNN types; they're probably status quo biased and 'biased' against the active reactionary/revolutionary branches of the parties.

> stray from classical

This is really complicated. They now have different policy objectives, but perhaps the same sentiments? I doubt I have it clear enough in my head to explain my view on this, sadly... OK.

The leftist ideals have tended to be to maximize negative and (once you add in socialist views) maximize positive liberty for as many people as possible. Don't restrict people from doing what they want and make sure as many people have the means to do what they want as possible. Libertarianism on social issues and at least redistributive social democracy on economic issues.

The right wing ideal, in my understanding, is that people often times want stupid shit and we shouldn't let them do it. Also evening out social outcomes is a bad idea since it reduces the incentive to work hard in everyone and impoverishes us all as a result. Also why shouldn't the best players of the social game have more power than the worst? So a mix of Burkean cautious respect for tradition and 'competition breeds excellence'.

I don't think the factions have 'strayed' from these ideals that much, but the translation of those ideals into policy positions has changed massively over time.

Anyway, the right-wing camps, in my outsider view.

Corporatist centrists: similar to the democratic centrists but with reversed culture wars allegiance and more tax-cutty.

Religious conservatives: culture war reactionaries, obviously. And I don't think just because they're losing ground in recent times. I'm sure there was opposition to liberal divorce laws and whatnot back in the whenever too.

Neo-cons: Republican trotskyists(lol https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/32f1df/is_th...). There are horrible regimes in the world, and America should replace them with more America. Unrelated, they invest their life savings into military contractor and adjacent corporations. See also responsibility to protect, Rwanda etc. It honestly sounds like such a good idea in theory("Check this out: we go to Afghanistan, we give them freedom and in 20 years time bam it's Minnesota in Central Asia!"), but it always goes so horribly bad in practice.

Libertarians: way more politicians claim to be that than actually live it tho, much more focused on economic aspect than social aspect. Some cynical corporatists hide under this label. I think casual libertarianish attitude describes a ton of the voters: don't increase my taxes, don't make me do anything I'm not already doing, don't make me think about the government just do your job behind the scenes.

Alt-right: culture war reactionaries? Straight up monarchist reactionary trolls? This is one of those labels that just gets painted pretty liberally, so I'm really not sure what a quick summary of it is. Trumpists?

Populist types: supposedly meh on the culture war and economically left-wing, sort of inspired by European Christian Democrat type parties. Hard to really say how much they disdain the culture war since american media is very culture war biased. Which is understandable since clearly everyone would find economic policy conversations boring(wink wink nudge nudge keep arguing amongst yourselves about pronouns and taboo words, dear proles!).