People I’m Sick Of
The “Blue Dog” Democrats, of which Sean has a typically insightful post on the main blog. His analysis is essentially right, that there are some principled populists who find their way into the group but its really just a bunch of very typical bought-and-paid-whore congresspeople. What Sean failed to do justice to, therefore, was how much the group is an invention of the media, and since Obama was inagurated are specifically being given the megaphone of the the historically “liberal” outfits that are becoming the new center-right such as Brookings and The Politico.
For better or worse I’ve kept myself aloof from the health care debate, but my understanding is the Blue Dogs actually did more good than ill in this case. But to speak to Sean’s larger point, no, there isn’t a place for the old Jeffersonian Democracy in the party, if it ever really existed in the first place, but the genuine populists who drive the liberal bloggers crazy and the Blue Dogs ever-so-duplicitously claim as their own, are there, and represent a real and tangible part of American political history.
And yet we have people like Ron Paul and his son continuing to be members of the Republican party- It’s dangerous to say anyone who wishes to harken back to the Jacksonian days of the Democrat party should join that party just because. Neither party is a bastion of conservatism, much less a bastion of any guiding philosophy at all. However, the one with tangible evidence of a desire to repent is the Republican party- most of the moderates have been tossed out in the past election cycles, with the exception of a few in the northeast and Florida. If you join the Democrat party, you’re beholden to the progressive leadership no matter what rhetoric you throw in about your “independence”. Politics is all about choosing the lesser of two evils, unless you want to expatriate and go live on a deserted island, and I don’t know about you, but John Boehner is a lot more appealing than Nancy Pelosi to me.
Tripp,
Your comments might deserve more respect if you used the proper terminology: it’s “Democratic Party” rather than “Democrat” Party. Petty childishness is tiresome.
The problem with the Republican Party is not moderates – an insignificant factor in the GOP. The problem is that the conservatives have their own version of big government which combines favors for special interests, international interventionism and meddling in people’s private lives.
We should support Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Peter Schiff and other constitutionalists who run as Republicans. But they don’t represent any real possibility of changing the Republican Party as a whole.