Conservative Democrat
After 1980, the Republicans became a mostly right-wing conservative party, with conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, and Tom DeLay, while the Democrats, while keeping their core liberal bases intact with such Senators as Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Paul Sarbanes, grew a substantial moderate/centrist wing, the New Democrats, in the 1990s in place of their old conservative wing, with leaders such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Evan Bayh. In the 2010 midterm elections, many conservative Democrats lost their seats to the Republicans.
Conservative wave
According to Roberto Schwarz, the left has historically had cultural hegemony. It can be considered its peak in the 1990s, a period that coincides with the beginning of the left turn in Latin America). In his essay "Culture and Politics in Brazil (1964-1969)", literary critic and professor Roberto Schwarz already observed the phenomenon. In full military regime, he writes:
Schwarz feared that the left would lose its cultural hegemony after the hardening of the military regime, but that did not happen. With the return of democracy, the left's cultural and intellectual hegemony was still enormous. In his work entitled "Literature" (1988), sociologist and writer Antonio Candido already observed the phenomenon. It was rare to find any politician or entrepreneur who risked defining himself as conservative as they were all "invariably centered, even center-left, including the frankly reactionary".