Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, and Rush Limbaugh are pushing for a purge of moderates from the Republican Party. To be sure, this is about book sales, radio ratings, and fundraising, but it is also about something else. The way to keep the GOP as the Party of No is to threaten every member of their caucuses in Washington with an energetic primary if they work with the Democrats or the Obama administration. It’s not a serious way of regaining majorities in Congress. In fact, it’s quite detrimental to that effort. But the Republicans don’t really care about Congress. They care about the White House. They don’t want Obama to succeed. They want him to fight and scrap for every vote, and cause internal strife within the Democratic caucus.
The more Obama has to trim his sails to pass legislation, the more ornery his base becomes at signs of weakness, compromise, and capitulation. If everything he accomplishes is done with no bipartisan support, it keeps the Republican base energized.
So, this is a strategy for taking back the White House in 2012, and not an effort to truly remake the Republican Party or to win back Congress. That’s what makes it truly distinct from the progressive blogosphere. While we complained about some of the decisions that Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer made in their recruitments (and refused to assist some of their candidates), we did not object to their overall plan for retaking Congress. We didn’t surge behind third-party candidates to prevent conservative Democrats from being elected in conservative districts. And what we were asking for wasn’t radical. We wanted the Democrats to stand up to the radicals in the White House and Congress.
That doesn’t mean that people in the progressive blogosphere don’t want some pretty big changes, but that wasn’t what we made our litmus tests about. Opposition to a senseless war, an unaccountable executive, and grotesque human rights abuses were our litmus tests. That’s not radical.
