Purity Purge

by digby

Last month we all read endless stories about how the leftist blogofascists are trying to purge the Democratic party of its moderates. We read that we not only didn’t have any decency, we were naive and self-defeating, just like our hippy heroes, the McGovernites. The national media closely covered our wild antics so that everyone in politics would see how untrustworthy we were and properly shun us.

Now, in a different race, we see this different angle on similar circumstances:

With a barrage of television advertisements and the mobilization of its get-out-the-vote machine, the national Republican Party has lined up in Rhode Island to beat back a conservative primary challenge to the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee. The outcome on Tuesday could help determine whether Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate.

In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary. Citing poll data, Republican leaders said they saw no way someone as conservative as Mr. Laffey could win in a state as Democratic as this; as it is, they are increasingly worried about Mr. Chafee’s hopes in a general election.

[…]

In many ways, what is happening in Rhode Island is a mirror of what happened in neighboring Connecticut last month: an ideological challenge from the wings to an established senator who is seen as out of step with his party. In that case, a Democrat, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, lost a primary to Ned Lamont, who attacked Mr. Lieberman for his support of the war in Iraq and his dalliances with the White House.

The difference is that there was no serious Republican challenger in the Connecticut race, so the Democratic Party invested relatively minimal resources in Mr. Lieberman.

Uhm no. Actually, the difference between Connecticut and Rhode island is that the primary challenge in Connecticut was consciously waged because it was in a state with a safe seat. From the beginning, the cognoscenti have failed to understand the difference between that pragmatic political decision and a quixotic, suicidal run from the right by Club for Growth in Rhode Island that might cost the Republican party their majority. They still don’t. From the beginning they have portrayed the Lamont challenge as a stupid, dangerous purge by leftwing wierdos while Stephen Moore’s vicious Rhode Island jihad is treated as perfectly respectable.

This is what happens when people don’t question assumptions they made 30 years ago. For the last time — it isn’t 1968 and it isn’t 1972. It isn’t even 1992. It’s 2006 and the radicals today wear nice suits and drive nice cars and they are crazy, rightwing motherfuckers who don’t give a damn if they drive the Republican party — and America — right over a cliff. You’d think it would be obvious by now that the grown-ups are definitely not in charge.

.