is that one embraces its extreme Ideologues and gave the control of its party to them while the other rejected theirs and have moderates in control... The first is npw the party most likely to be intolerant and the one who demand complete power...
>From the comments sectionWhat’s happening now in the Democratic party is that the ideological liberals (Dean, MoveOn, Kos, et al) have succeeded in wresting control from the institutional liberals (Hillary, Lieberman, et al). Where the Republicans have largely been successful at shearing off and marginalizing the influence in their own party of people like David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and less conservative but equally nutty types like Ross Perot, the Democrats have not. They have gone from Mondale, to Dukakis, to Clinton, to Gore, to Kerry, to Obama - a nearly unbroken linear progression from garden-variety liberal to wackadoo liberal. They have, over the last dozen or so years, bit by bit ceded control of their party to the kooks. The Republicans may have lost in ‘92 due to the vote-splitting caused by Perot’s candidacy, but they didn’t lose because Perot was running the Republican Party. The same can’t be said of the Dems - they lost in 2000, in 2004, and it’s looking like in 2008, because their candidates keep getting more and more liberal. If the institutional liberals had the power to “dismiss” the ideological kooks, they would have done so by now - probably following the 2000 election, but certainly by 2004. The fact that they haven’t, I submit, is proof that they can’t. Instead, what you have is Joe Lieberman speaking at the GOP convention, Hillary throwing up her hands in a “good luck with that” kind of gesture, PUMA’s crossing over in significant numbers, and states like Minnesota and New York perhaps being in play. My prediction is that the party will continue to fracture along that ideological/institutional fault line. The ideological liberals will not cede the power they’ve gained - beginning in earnest in 2000, and cemented in 2004. The institutional liberals, with no place else to go, will have no choice but to wage war against them for control of the party. Hillary/Obama was just a skirmish - the real battles are yet to come. I think it’s a wonderful thing, since the reason the Dems are in this mess is because they made a deal with the devil in 2000 in hopes that having the lunatic fringe on their side would put them over the top. That plan failed, but by the time the SCOTUS process was over and they realized they had lost, it was too late to stop the loon insurgence into the party. Ever since then, it’s since spread like a cancer to the point where excising it would mean not a couple of election cycles spent in the wilderness - like what happened with the GOP in 92 and 96 - but splitting the Dem party as we know it now into two distinct (and competing) entities, neither one of which would have anywhere near the numbers to win the White House. A fracture like that would also likely be mirrored in the House and Senate (hello, Ned Lamont!) The challenge for Republicans from here on out - provided McCain wins - is to figure out how to keep the GOP from getting so liberal that guys like Lieberman feel they’re able to join in good conscience, or - worse - that they’re considered even more seriously as VP selections by GOP nominees. It’s tempting to want to cast your net wider when you see an opportunity for votes, but we have to remember that when we welcome the likes of Lieberman into our ranks, it doesn’t make guys like him more conservative, nearly as much as it makes our party more liberal. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/15/is-new-york-in-play/comment-page-3/#comment-1423983 >>> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
