Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think is a 1996 book by cognitive linguist George Lakoff.

The book is intended as an objective study of the conceptual metaphors underlying conservative and liberal politics although the closing section is devoted to the author's personal views.

Lakoff wrote Moral Politics soon after the Republican Party's "Contract With America" takeover of Congress under the Clinton presidency, and his usage of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" is strongly influenced by how those labels were used in the 1994 elections, the former having much to do with the Democratic party and the latter with the Republican party; indeed, chapter 9, "Moral Categories in Politics", presents Hillary Clinton as a prototypical "liberal" and Newt Gingrich as a prototypical "conservative".

The major observations/assumptions and questions on which the book is founded include these: Lakoff tries to resolve these difficulties through a model in which liberals and conservatives are shown to have different and contradictory worldviews.

Nonetheless, Lakoff claims that all of these differences center around the two sides' respective understandings of a single concept - the ideal nuclear family.

This is correlated with the following views: Lakoff uses this model to answer the central questions framed above - why is there such clear grouping on issues that separate liberals and conservatives, and, conversely, why don't we find more issue-by-issue voters?

Thus, in Part IV, "The Hard Issues", he tries to demonstrate how the liberal and conservative worldviews outlined above lead to typical liberal and conservative positions on a wide range of issues, including taxes, the death penalty, environmental regulations, affirmative action, education, and abortion.

In addressing why conservatives and liberals choose different issues as the focus of their campaigns, Lakoff claims that this too finds explanation in the context of his model.

Chapter 17, "Varieties of Liberals and Conservatives", is devoted to showing scales along which one can slide and still be a member of either camp.

In the terminology of cognitive linguistics, Lakoff views both liberal and conservative as "radial category" labels.

As a cognitive scientist Lakoff emphasizes that what conservatives know that liberals don't is how to use metaphors to motivate people.

Within this framework, the original subtitle can be seen as a call-to-arms to liberals to gain understanding of how people actually think about politics, or face growing electoral irrelevance.

First, he was the governor of Vermont, and later the front-runner in a crowded primary race although his campaign was staffed mostly by students and non-professional political staff.

Dean later wrote the introduction to a related but shorter book by Lakoff, Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.