We should all be well versed by now on the does and don’t of nation building. You help the moderates in the country, even if you don’t like them, in order to empower them and isolate the radical elements.
Easily said. Hard to do.
Democrats are now faced with the need for some serious party-building – isolating the radicals in the party by embracing the more levelheaded moderates in the party.
Oh wait… sorry. I bet you ...
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There is a message in this piece – eschew extremism, seek the practical, realizable middle and reap all sorts of benefits. Comparing extremism on the left with extremism on the right (speaking from the US perspective which is pretty much to the right of other Western democracies) is an effective technique. However, the writer weakens the impact by botching the details. The different stripes of conservatism and their adherents are mixed up, misapplied or ignored and “neo” has little relevance to the brand of liberalism he describes.
I strongly agree with the underlying message of this piece but I believe that in addition to botching the details he makes a mistake by demonizing the icons of the last Republican campaign while urging good manners and by presuming that it takes the Democrats to save the Republicans while arguing that the Democrats will have a difficult time keeping themselves on track.
The problem with a liberal's prescription for how to reinvent the Republican Party is that he doesn't know much about his subject. He lumps Gingrich, a modernist, with Falwell, a primitive. And he seems to think neoconservatives are ultraconservatives, when in fact their real defining attribute is extreme hawkishness on foreign policy.
Unlike Dan Kennedy, I don't read this as advice to Republicans piece, but rather as advuce to other Democrats. And while the family tree may be mislabeled, I think that the author makes a valid point that more and more of the moderating forces in the Republican party have been thrown out by voters and this will make it harder for Democrats. ( To this, I would add that many have retired voluntarily--while Lincoln Chaffee was voted out, Tom Davis and John Warner of VA retired.) James ... More »
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