Party Polarization

There is no doubt that the Tea Party movement is meant to pull the Republican party to the right into territory normally ceded to Libertarians. While they dislike President Obama and his progressive policies, they are also upset with free-spending Republicans often called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). It is a matter faith among the left that this will ultimately doom the Republicans' expected gains this November. They are sure that the Tea Party is unattractive to most voters and that candidates that the Tea Party approves of will be too far from the mainstream to win. Robert Creamer, writing at Huffington, calls the Tea Party "an extremist cancer in the Republican Party".

What is interesting is that the same thing is happening in the Democratic party but is largely overlooked. The best example was the attempted challenge to Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. The difference is that this was conducted by party insiders - unions and MoveOn. Lincoln is an example of the type of Democrat that was recruited in 2006 to take back Congress, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats. She is a moderate Democrat from a conservative state.

Lincoln's sin was to come out against "card check". This would allow union organizers to bypass secret elections if they could get a majority of workers to sign pledge cards. Considering the leg-breaking tactics that the supporters of card check have been using elsewhere (1), it is likely that undue pressure would be applied to workers to get them to sign the cards. The unions want the Democrats kept in line so they spent $10 million in an effort to unseat Lincoln. While they failed, Creamer points out that the effort was still intimidating to politicians. The Democrats are now on notice that they may face a rough primary instead of running unopposed if they deviate from the unions' agenda.

Two points here - the White House and the unions made it clear that they disagreed on this. The White House pointed out that this was $10 million that could have been used on other races. The unions replied that they are not a subsidiary of the Democratic party. The implication is that they are more interested in keeping Democrats in line than in getting them elected in the first place. This attitude is almost identical to the Tea Party.

Strangely, Creamer, who thinks that this is a cancer when coming from the right, applauds the same thing when coming from the left.

Polls continue to show that we are a center/right country. Most people support free enterprise and dislike unions. The progressives are way to the left of this. They have convinced themselves that the elections of 2006 and 2008 mean that the country moved to the left and that they can abandon the centrist candidates that let them regain power.

Republicans have a similar view. After eight years of Bush centrism, they think that their party no longer stands for anything and want a return to the days of Reagan when government was the problem instead of the solution.

The result of all this is that the parties are polarizing along the proper role of government in daily life. The Democrats want more involvement in everything. The Republicans think that the government is already too intrusive. The next couple of elections will decide what course the country will take. Two more years of Democrat control will put the country on a course that will be almost impossible to change. A Republican victory will bring the Obama agenda to a screeching halt.



(1) - SEIU members have attacked people associated with the Tea Party on multiple occasions. More recently, a group hundreds of protesters showed up on the lawn of a bank officer on a Sunday demanding changes to the bank's policies.