From Instapundit, co…

From Instapundit, comes this E-mail he got regarding the Democrats and their situation as the minority party.

You rightly point out that we liberals must do our best to shout down, disassociate ourselves, do everything we can to make ourselves no longer the party of Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, et al.

And as you noted, the Right does do a better job of quieting its ‘idiotarians’. The only problem is, they essentially do it with the “bribes and promises” approach. Jerry Falwell, even when muzzled, knows that to some degree he and the people he represents will get a hearing from the White House and congress, the American seats of power.

On the left, we are a minority in all branches of government. How can we cast off the extremists if we have nothing to offer to placate them, nothing to drive them away with? It makes it harder to easily dismiss them, and as we get drawn into a serious debate with them (which we’d handily win), the Republicans will simply say, “Look, the Democrats can’t even stop their circular firing squad, how can they run the country?” and we’ll lose more seats in Congress.

I’m with the College Dems at my school, and the reactionary extremism is so thick you could cut it with a knife. What’s the solution for people like me? What *can* we do? Casting out the extremists seems an awful lot like putting salt on a bird’s tail.

The first thing that came to my mind was, “Well, how did the Republicans do it?” They certainly haven’t been in this current situation for very long, relatively speaking. I’m no political strategist, but I’d at least have to say that it can be done (even if I can’t explain how). The Right has had its share of extremists; how did we handle them?

As Glenn asks:

The question is, will the Democrats be willing to do to Ted Kennedy, for his remarks on the war, what Republicans did to Trent Lott, for his remarks on Strom Thurmond and the 1948 election?

I’d add that they could learn something from how the Republicans handled David Duke as well. The Democrats have shown, over the course of decades, that it doesn’t really matter what you sound like as long as you vote the Democrat line. You can shake down corporations like Jesse Jackson as long as you pull in Democrat voters. You can engage in the politics of personal destruction, as James Carville has done for years, as long as you don’t question a Democrat president.

That’s the attitude that has to change before anything else can.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!