I have no desire to beat up on Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney. I’ll simply note that both of them espoused some ideas that were outside the mainstream of progressive thought and that you’d be hard-pressed to find well-known progressive bloggers who hold either of them in high regard. Most people I know felt that Kucinich and McKinney were poor spokespeople for our values because they were extreme is some respects and because they were more committed to self-promotion than to progressive causes and values. Neither of them, however, ever won a nomination to run for the U.S. Senate and then lost an easy opportunity to pick up a seat in the upper chamber. Democrats, including their committed progressive base, still display a degree of pragmatism that is sorely lacking on the Republican side. I can’t explain exactly why the progressive base of the party doesn’t nominate unelectable candidates on a routine basis, but it isn’t the result of any conspiracy from the Establishment. It doesn’t really help that some nutty Republicans have won (e.g., Mike Lee in Utah, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Ted Cruz in Texas). They won because they were running in states that were more hostile to Democrats than Colorado or Indiana or Missouri or Nevada or Alaska or North Dakota or Delaware. The fact that Cruz and Paul and Lee are in the Senate makes it less likely that the Republicans can compete in modestly red or purple states. Most people still see extremism as a vice.
I don’t know if William F. Buckley would treat the modern day Tea Party like the latter-day John Birch Society, or not. I just know that anyone who wants to see the president’s birth certificate is part of the problem for the Republicans.
