Democrats like to tell themselves a comforting story.

Democrats are pragmatists, if they do say so themselves, deeply rooted in the reality-based community, beholden to facts, toiling valiantly and soberly to make the country a better, fairer place. Republicans, meanwhile, are ideologues monomaniacally fixated on cutting government spending and taxes for the wealthy, regardless of the consequences, and moving inexorably further and further to the extreme right.

However, if a recent Pew poll is to be believed, this story is nothing but a self-justifying myth.