Political Bases and Compromise with @frankm
Each party has to pay some attention to their base, because those are the people who will be volunteering, donating, and most likely to turn out to vote in the primaries. Those people form the core of the parties: it makes sense that politicians will be attentive to their interests. To completely ignore them is to ignore political reality. For example, the Democrats can’t compromise on restrictions for reproductive rights, because liberal women would be enraged and primary any Dem who voted for it. And even if the Dem survived the primary, those women would certainly be apathetic in the general. Why vote for “a Republican-Lite”?
The Republicans have been completely bound to their base/donors for years. Why else would they have worked to pass extremely unpopular legislation during the last term?