From a rather interesting 1977 essay by Jeane Kirkpatrick in Commentary:

Research has established that the party regular is attached to politics by social as well as ideological incentives (and sometimes also by material incentives) and that such attachment encourages the virtues of the good team member: cooperation, perseverence, loyalty, service, and the will to win. The ideological perspective, in contrast, is hostile to the construction and maintenance of organizational solidarity, for several reasons: first, because persons attached to politics by ideology do not identify themselves with organizations but with a point of view, and their commitment to organizations is therefore weak, instrumental, conditional; second, because persons attracted to politics by ideological incentives tend to hold relatively extreme and intense views and to have relatively comprehensive ideological orientations which encourages them to see particular questions as part of larger wholes. This in turn means that virtually any policy or issue can be perceived as involving “fundamental” questions of conscience which cannot be compromised without a sacrifice of “principle.”

The essay in question is called “Why the New Right Failed” — failed, that is, to nominate Ronald Reagan, John Connally, or George Wallace in 1976. Four years later, of course, the New Right would play an important role in both nominating and electing Reagan. I think Kirkpatrick’s assessment of the ideological vs. the partisan mind is mostly correct, but over the past 20 years the Republicans have figured out a way to span the gap. Rather than having the ideological activist give his loyalty directly to a central organization, which after all cannot possibly faithfully represent every interest of a coalition on every point, the activist only has to be loyal to his particular niche organization, and these can then coalesce with the leadership of other broadly sympathetic ideological groups. This is exactly the approach Paul Weyrich and Grover Norquist followed in organizing the contemporary Republican Right. Rather than trying to build a broad but unorganized electoral coalition, the strategy is to build an organized — hierarchical is maybe just a bit too strong — network of sympathetic groups.

Furthermore, while Kirkpatrick points out that it’s rare in eletoral politics for voters to have a genuine choice between two candidates representing wholly different ideologies, it is possible through propaganda to create the impression that any given electoral contest is between two radically divergent philosophies. The more that nonpolitical — that is, non-state-controlled — issues of identity and culture can be brought into political discourse, the easier it becomes to construct fictional polarities. The differences between Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and to all appearances of what’s to come, Obama (with Clinton II as his secretary of state) are pretty meager. But “culturally,” or propandistically, every four years has been a showdown between freedom-loving American patriots and countercultural McGoverniks, according to the narrative set up by the Republican coalition. The Democratic narrative involves wealthy, out-of-touch, racist Republicans trying to oppress the already oppressed.

There are a couple of layers of irony to all this. The New Right seemingly succeeded after 1976, by nominating and electing Reagan. But the Reagan Revolution and 1994 Republican Revolution in Congress, changed very little. The “success” of the New Right was literally illusory — new myths, new propagandistic images, took hold in the public discourse, camouflaging a the fundamental continuity and identity between the two major parties. (That’s not to say nothing at all of substance changed — both Carter and Reagan represented represented some change from the Truman/Johnson/Kennedy and Nixon mentalities of their parties. But business as usual resumed under the two Bushes, Clinton, and now Obama.)