Just consider this our little “well, isn’t that special” moment for those out there that whine about the Religious Right’s undue influence on the Republican party
"I will continue whipping my colleagues to oppose bringing the bill to the floor for a vote until a clean vote against public funding for abortion is allowed," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Monday in a statement.
He said last week that 40 Democrats could vote with him to oppose the legislation -- enough to derail the bill.
That felt so good, we may need a smoke.
The meme’ of the radicalization of the Republican party has become the talking point du jour for the left and we couldn’t be more pleased. The left’s belief that the Republicans risk permanent marginalization because of a huge swerve to the right is a premise that is so spectacularly flawed, we should take to pushing it here ourselves.
Because, god knows, we don’t want the liberal-Left to think that they are open to any electoral vulnerability as they passed a $787 billion political payoff package and as they continue to ram a personally invasive $1.2 trillion health care plan and an economically ruinous and environmentally dubious cap and trade bill through Congress.
No, siree. Nothing radical about any of that.
Posts
3 comments:
Very nice find! Somehow I think this will go under-reported.
Dude, did you see what the Reverend Wright said about Maxism? "Marxism? It's teh awesome!" or something like that.
Eric Cantor said today that not one Republican will vote for health care reform. That is an implied threat to run any dissenter out of the party. The Democrats have these tendencies also on some issues, but in general have much more tolerance for dissent, a broader range of views within the party, and much less ability to enforce party discipline.
Sometimes party discipline can be a good thing, and it has worked well for the Republicans in the past. The problem now is that the base of the Republican Party has views that are more doctrinaire than in the past. So combination of an inability to tolerate dissent and an ability to impose party discipline are likely to lead the Republican Party to enforce positions that are going to make it tough for them to attract moderate voters in districts where they might need to do that to win. Which means that in places like Maine or Vermont, an intolerance for moderate Republicans by the party faithful means that those representatives will all be Democrats eventually. Look at what happened in upstate New York this week, where the first Democrat in over a hundred years was elected.
As I said, Democrats do the same thing to some extent. If the Democratic base targets some of the Blue Dog Democrats, if they run people like Joe Lieberman out of the party, Republicans could be elected instead in some places. But Democrats don't enforce party discipline nearly as well.
Post a Comment