You know, this might change now that Arlen Specter has defected to the Democrats, but have you ever wondered why Ben Nelson (D-NE) gets so little grief from the liberal side of the Democratic Party even though he has a Progressive Punch lifetime score of 43.7% on siding with the Democrats on crucial votes? Why aren’t liberals constantly braying about Nelson’s betrayal? Why don’t you see post after post in the blogosphere inviting Nelson to leave the party?
The simplest answer is that Ben Nelson keeps a low profile and he rarely badmouths his own party or the party’s leadership. He votes how he votes and he leaves the talking to others. But the other reason is that liberals are pragmatic. At least, they’re a hell of a lot more pragmatic than their counterparts on the right. We have deep political and moral differences with Ben Nelson, but he doesn’t make false promises and he doesn’t grandstand and he doesn’t badmouth us. We know that he represents a deeply conservative state and that he votes with us almost half the time. He didn’t vote for Obama’s budget tonight but I doubt you’ll find any blogs that are ripping him for it. No one is trying to push him out of the party.
We reserve our wrath for Democrats that make a habit out of criticizing liberals (like Evan Bayh, Harold Ford Jr., and Joe Lieberman). Even conservative Democrats from fairly liberal states, like Tom Carper of Delaware, are seldom criticized in harsh tones as long as they avoid providing talking points for FOX News.
It’s hard to believe that the conservative purists on the other side are so much less forgiving of their centrists than we are of ours. It’s totally self-defeating. Specter’s case is a good example. The reason he couldn’t win a primary in Pennsylvania is because independents and Democrats are not allowed to vote in Republican primaries in this state and, because all the moderate Republicans have already re-registered as either independents or Democrats, only conservative Republicans remain on the voter rolls. This gives the conservatives a chance to control who their candidate will be, but it also means that their candidate will only appeal to the little rump that is left of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.
They seem convinced that their failure was brought about by the watering down of their core message by weak-kneed moderate Republicans. But their core message was plain to see to everyone at the Sarah Palin rallies during the 2008 campaign. It’s fucking frightening. Katrina and Iraq were bad enough, but unbridled, nativist, racism is not something appealing to people of color, young people, or people with a shred of decency. It the Pat Buchanification of the Grand Old Party, and more Republicans are going to defect the more ‘pure’ it becomes. At this point, I would advise Yankee Republicans to form their own party and have it funded by Wall Street, not Mega Churches.
