Death of the Moderate . . . Democrat

Posted by Erick Erickson
Friday, April 27th at 4:45AM EDT

Red State:

It is worth noting that on Tuesday several moderate Democrats went down in flames in Pennsylvania, continuing a trend that has escalated since 2008. Liberals do not want moderate Democrats in their caucus.

What is most interesting about it from a conservative perspective, however, is how there has not been a ton of coverage about the death of the blue dogs — more dogs dead in Barack Obama and the left’s war on dogs. Had moderate Republicans been defeated, we would have major stories on pretty much every news network and on the front page of every paper in America.

Routinely we hear that Republicans cannot win in New England, despite Republican successes in New England in 2010. Routinely we hear about the GOP driving moderates out of the party. Big tent cliches surround the stories. Rarely does the ongoing purging of the Democratic Party make such news.

In fact, the Democratic Party has become increasingly hostile to moderates, though the media rarely cares to focus on this because the reporters who’d pay attention often are to the left of the moderate Democrats and proclaim their position the center. Those moderate Democrats are, therefore, well outside the mainstream.

I do not lament the decline and fall of the Blue Dog Coalition. The United States remains a center-right nation and Democrats must continue to run as “centrist” to appeal in swing states. Their true colors ruin their chances. The fewer “centrists” they have, the more difficult it becomes for them to appeal to voters, including Hispanic voters who continue to be some of the most socially conservative voters in America.

The lesson, here, though is that partisans in both parties prefer their candidates to stand for something and fight for something. The media’s predominant bias is a good government bias and reporters hail those Republicans and Democrats who work across party lines to get things done in Washington. And what have they done?

We’re at $15 trillion and counting to what they’ve done. But it was done in the name of good government — a concept that is always framed as our salvation and will ultimately be our damnation as we go bankrupt with repeated good government compromises.