I have no doubt that some liberals are "liberals" in name only, and routinely vote for conservative causes and policies because they truly believe in most of them. That is why I mentioned how so many liberals during the '90s morphed into "centrists."

However, dude, there is no doubt in my eyes whatsoever that people often either pretend to express opinions they do not actually have, or simply stay silent on the matter and not stand up to those who espouse opinions or feelings they do not share or maybe even oppose, due to peer pressure, i.e., fear of being disliked if they go against popular opinion, and not having the will or fortitude to stand up to the opposition, whom they regard as tougher than them for whatever reason. As such, this can be very logically expected to play out on a larger political scale, since liberals became notorious for avoiding conflicts, and pushing the concept of "pragmatism" to beyond a reasonable extent, in their case meaning that they were acquiescing to what they believed they had to do, or had to vote, in order to come off as "tough" and be taken "seriously" by the dominant conservative mindset, and be able to play in the political field in the first place ("I didn't agree with the war, but if I voted against it, the conservative smear campaigns would practically write themselves, and the current climate is not good to vote against a war right now, and if you want liberal politicians like me to stay in the game right now, and be in a position to make changes when the time is right, then blah blah blah..."). There are many cases when they said things, and then backed down and claimed "bi-partisanship is important," if the conservatives threw pejorative epithets at them such as: "soft on terrorism," soft on child abuse," "hater of America," etc., et al., to the point where most mainstream liberals in politics are reluctant to even use the name "liberal" to apply to themselves over the past decade!

As for single-handedly bringing the gays into mainstream acceptance, that didn't happen until it was politically 'safe' to do so, and it took until 2012 for a sitting president to speak in favor of gay marriage. You didn't see mainstream liberals sticking to their principles on acceptance of gays during the 1950s, regardless of whether they truly believed in it or not. Instead, you saw prominent liberals like Dr. Frederick Wertham bashing fictional characters by decrying the type of relationship that Batman, Robin, and Alfred must have had (in Wertham's creative mind, that is) for being three dudes living alone together, or what he perceived to be implied about Wonder Woman's home of Paradise Island, which was inhabited only by women (which took no creativity to discern and was certainly the truth--all in his awesomely draconian book Seduction of the Innocent, which almost destroyed the comic book industry). And even during the 1990s, when the gays were the darlings of the mainstream liberal set, staunch liberal Rosie O'Donnell hid the fact that she was gay from all her fans for the entire duration of her popular, long-running talk show, and only "came out" in her memoirs, which she made sure didn't hit the book shelves until a few months following the final airing of her talk show. And don't give me that nonsense some of her fans claim, i.e., "She only hid the fact that she was gay because she wanted her fans to like her as a person, and not as a gay person!" Whatevs!!! (Note the AG-friendly abbreviation for "whatever" I recently learned.) She was a coward during an era that no longer called for being so, plain and simple.

I'm sorry, old friend, but I strongly disagree with you on this in terms of all liberals (or 'libruls,' if you prefer), but I can certainly agree in the case of the many false "liberals" and progressives out there who are actually just moderate conservatives who happen to be infiltrators--er, members of the Democratic Party. I can agree with you that centrists like Obama vote consistently to the Right because they actually support those policies, but not all who apply the term 'liberal' or 'progressive' to themselves, be they in or out of politics.