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Defining the Upcoming War within the Democratic Party

by Conservativity Staff,
Originally Posted: 9/20/2005 9:27:35 PM

Back on August 29, I wrote about the upcoming schism in the Democratic Party.  On the 14th, Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek / MSNBC, making the same point, and providing more perspective on it.  I remember discussing this with my brother on the 15th.  Today, Rush Limbaugh made the same point, but along a slightly different tack.  Leave it to Rush to touch it with a needle while we amateurs grasp only the gross points.

The party is already split.  As Fineman noted, the leftist blogs are beginning to drive the left.  They are setting forth a very combative tone.  They reject any doctrine that is anywhere short of the extreme of the extreme Left, and they vow revenge on all who do not toe the liberal line.  For example, they think that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a "moderate" (meaning very liberal people acting like they’re conservative) group that launched bill Clinton to his minority victory in 1992, is a sellout organization, openly comparing it to Vichy France!

"To these extreme extremist leftists, any accommodation is an anathema.  Extreme America-haters like Cindy Sheehan are the heroes of these bloggers.  Reading their vitriol requires an airsickness bag."

Fineman: "in the view of the Blogosphere, the DLC model is outmoded and dangerously accomodationist, in the manner of the allegedly independent, but in reality pro-Nazi, regime of wartime of France."  To these extreme extremist leftists, any accommodation is an anathema.  Extreme America-haters like Cindy Sheehan are the heroes of these bloggers.  Reading their vitriol requires an airsickness bag.  I do it, but only because I am obligated to be fully informed, and I feel as if I need a shower when I log out of an extreme America-hate site like Daily Kos.

The Democratic party is being co-opted by hypocrites like Howard Dean, a dynastically wealthy physician who claims to be the friend of the common man, while insulting the black man as only being worthy of being waitstaff at GOP events.  In the meantime, there are still the Beltway Dems, who realize that they will never be elected to be dog catcher if they kowtow to the bloggers.  What does this mean?  War.

"Right now, Hillary Clinton is in the middle of a forming battlefield, with the Beltway / DLC crowd on one side and the bloggers, and the Dean DNC itself on the other.."

Right now, Hillary Clinton is in the middle of a forming battlefield, with the Beltway / DLC crowd on one side and the bloggers, and the Dean DNC itself on the other.  Angry immature extremist interest groups bolster the Dean / DNC faction, feeling that they are losing in the court of public opinion because they’re not combative enough!  Hillary is married to the shrewdest politician since Reagan.  She knows that, if she plays to this base, she will be unelectable even if nominated.  Her Hobson’s choice is that, if she plays to be electable, she is un-nominatable.

This is worsened by the fact that more and more of the base is siding with Dean.  Each faction is, as I have repeatedly noted, demanding 100% fealty to their special interest.  This in and of itself is problematic.  Labor unions have a vested interest in seeing environmental regulations relaxed; their rank and file workers’ jobs depend on it.  Environmental groups want no compromises, regardless of the impact on the workforce.  Labor, for the most part, is on the DLC side of things.  Their rank and file has voted more and more GOP since the days of Ronald Reagan; in 2008, there exists a possibility of some labor leadership defecting to the GOP!

"...[T]he Dems don’t see that the bridge is out, and are steaming their extremism locomotive.  They think, delusionally, that they will retake the congress in 2006 or 2008; that the Bush presidency has been effectively ruined."

As Rush has also noted, the Dems don’t see that the bridge is out, and are steaming their extremism locomotive.  They think, delusionally, that they will retake the congress in 2006 or 2008; that the Bush presidency has been effectively ruined.  Any neutrally-worded poll, any candid interview of electorate, gives lie to that premise.  Overconfident, the Dean extremist factions continue to demand obeisance and fealty.  This places every 2006 and 2008 contender into the same crossfire as Sen. Clinton.  And there is nowhere to go.

War is inevitable.  The result of the fracture of the party will be a disaster in 2006.  Here’s an example.  Every Dem senator who votes "Aye" on John Roberts for Chief Justice will be in the extremists’ crosshairs.  These senators will be vulnerable at primary time to extremists who will run on the notion that Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be a bit conservative for them but she’s a good compromise.  Some senators will fall in the primaries, and the GOP will waltz into these seats.  For any of  these Senators who vote "nay" on Roberts, the extremists will be in love, but these senators will look, to normal people, you know, the ones who vote in the general election, like the extremists who support them.  Again, the GOP gets the seat. 

"When the GOP hits 61 in the Senate, which is feasible in 2006, the floodgates on the Bush Agenda open wide."

When the GOP hits 61 in the Senate, which is feasible in 2006, the floodgates on the Bush Agenda open wide.  Without the filibuster, the GOP will have carte blanche to enact every reform that has been filibustered since the 1980s, and will rapidly do so.  The Democrats will be rendered whining irrelevant cry babies.  And then, the less extreme liberals will split from the more extreme liberals, and there will be a party civil war.  We’ll end up with a 3-party system, with the DNC taking over the role of the Socialist party it subsumed in the 1930s.  Alternatively, we’ll end up with a fractured Democratic party with no ability to do anything.

Shouldn’t I, a conservative, be cheering?  No!  The reason that the Democrats were this way is because the FDR revolution of the 1930s split the GOP in two.  There was no effective opposing viewpoint to the leftist position, and it took us nearly three decades to get our message into cogent form.  In that timeframe, the leftists got used to having their opinions assumed dogmatically to be true.  They lost their sharpness because of the lack of competition.  I want the left to be there and I want the left to keep us on our toes, to by their vacuousness remind us of our intellectual foundations.

"If we get complacent and begin to feel entitled to power, the left will sneak up on us and will reword their message in such a way as to win over the people.  And we’ll be the ones intellectually unprepared to respond to them."

If we get complacent and begin to feel entitled to power, the left will sneak up on us and will reword their message in such a way as to win over the people.  And we’ll be the ones intellectually unprepared to respond to them.  And we’ll be the immature ones who continuously whine as the left ascends.  And I will rue that day.  True, I will be nearly 100 years old if the present cycle repeats itself, but given advances in medicine I will still be around and I don’t want to see us get complacent.

But, we have no control over this war.  Only the liberals do.  Sadly, I don’t see them abandoning their self-destructive course.  All I can do is to remind us all, every day, that we won our mandate through hard work, and we’re not entitled to power -- we must earn it daily.