While taking issue with the idea that conservatives shouldn’t only vote for Republicans, Daniel Koffler explains, quite clearly, something that doesn’t get talked about often enough:

But even if the GOP were a clearly more conservative option, that would not necessarily obligate a sincere self-identified conservative to support the Republicans, all else being equal. It depends on what sort of conservative one is. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, the Tory party is not substantially closer in substantive terms to either American party; if anything, the Tories are are on balance just slightly to the left, and thus a fortiori to the left, of the Democrats — Boris Johnson didn’t endorse Obama because he is the Weather Underground’s Manchurian Mayor of London. Likewise with the CDU/CSU (Merkel’s party) and FDP (the free-marketeers) in Germany, the UMP (Sarkozy’s party) in France, and the other parties of the European center-right. Or in other words, by the dominant worldwide standards, the Democrats of the United States are a center-right party, which is simply to say that the political median of the United States is further right than in other countries.

We’ve drifted rightward over the last 16 years or so, with both parties worried about tariffs, corporate taxation, dividends, capital gains, and other free market principles. The only difference between the parties is that the Dems have, under Clinton, paid attention to median income and the health of the middle class.