Where conservatives and liberals debate their beliefs, we need solid social science. Social science may be necessarily soft compared to the natural sciences, but political scientists still do follow the scientific method, and they should therefore be in a position to help shape public policy.
Politicians and voters on the left and right agree on some major goals, but they differ in how they believe those goals are to be achieved. If both sides agree, for example, that growing the economy is desirable, but disagree on how much the government should intervene in the market, then that should be testable by economists; you should be able to create models that demonstrate whether a regulated market yields greater growth than a free market. If the left and right agree that lowering the crime rate is desirable, criminologists ought test to determine whether rehabilitation or a retributive justice system reduces the crime rate. If politicians disagree on whether to ban hand guns and semiautomatic rifles, yet agree that fewer gun deaths in the country is to be desired, then researches should test that scientifically.
The problem that is too often run into is that Republicans and Democrats have different ideologies that may be philosophically consistent but that need empirical input. It is not enough to come to policy conclusions if the premises those conclusions are based on are not founded on accurate observations of what really happens in the world.
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