Digby @ Hullabaloo...
excerpts:
"Party orthodoxy" is a code word-- and I hate using code words against our own party-- for the liberal wing. I've been hearing this trope about party orthodoxy for almost twenty years and it's as stale as "tax and spend" and "hell no, we won't go." The only people who are still listening to this shit are the "convulsively neoliberal" DC establishment.
I was once an adherent of the view that moving to be middle was the smart move. But I finally hit a wall, a wall that apparently has knocked the Democratic establishment unconscious or stupid instead of awake. The other side now holds all institutional power in Washington and its power is strengthened by what the DLC is doing, namely promoting the position that the base of the Democratic party is outside the mainstream of the country. You never hear Republicans doing that.
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... if the DLC guys don't recognize that TIMES HAVE CHANGED then there is no reason to listen to them anymore. The Republicans that were the minority leaders in the house and senate when Bill Clinton got elected were Bob Michel and Bob Dole. Those guys have been turned out to pasture.
The Republicans today are systematically starting wars, bankrupting the country and repealing the bill of rights. Excuse me while I get a little more alarmed about that kind of thing than whether Michael Moore and Move-on are a little bit unruly.
I don't think it's too much to ask that centrist and moderate Democrats look at the Republican orthodoxy at least as often as they complain in the direction of the base of the Democratic party. I certainly think that they should take their ample opportunities in the media to make that point as long as they are distancing themselves from the 'party orthodoxy.' Indeed, if I were asked to define what party orthodoxy is these days, I would have to say that it is the reflexive recoil against the unwashed masses out here in the grassroots who are tearing our hair out and screaming for the establishment to look at the rogue elephant that is trampling on everything we believe in.
Read the entire post (complete with quotes from Candy Crowley!)
H E R E
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