Markos Moulitsas wrote a post for his
community site recently that really took me back.
He was asking his members, who identify
themselves as netroots activists, to forgive Washington Democrats
their transgressions (like supporting torture) and work hard for the
ticket.
He concluded, “What annoys me is when
people threaten to leave the party. As though that will somehow make
things better.”
All this took me back to my childhood,
during the birth pangs of the modern conservative movement.
In my home state of New York that
movement was a reaction to the “liberal Republican” party of such
people as Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. Conservatives finally
opted-out. They formed a Conservative Party which could endorse
Republicans or endorse someone else. And when Rockefeller ran in 1966
they put up their own guy, a tweedy professor named Paul Adams.
These New York Conservatives were major
funders of the Goldwater wing of the party outside New York. And they
finally got their own form of justice, when their James L. Buckley
beat a nominal Republican, Charles Goodell, and Democrat Richard
Ottinger in 1970. Of course by that time they had the White House.
Nixon’s people supported Buckley, who created a “temporary” third
party so that Republicans wouldn’t have to build the new party in
order to get their guy in.
The point is that American political
parties are enormous beasts. Much of what we call politics happens
inside the parties, and those who opt-out of that, in a competitive
state, have to know what they are risking. Those who choose not to
participate in intra-party politics of any type, meanwhile, simply
give their primary votes to those people who do participate.
Back in 1966 there were two Republican
parties in New York, the “official” party that leaned against the
Johnson-Truman-Roosevelt New Deal thesis, and the “conservative”
party that refused to go along locally and concentrated on
ideological combat. History says the conservatives won – game, set,
and match.
So in 2006 there will be two Democratic
parties. There will be the “official” party leaning against the
Bush-Reagan-Nixon thesis, those who will say their issue is the
tactic of Iraq, and the “netroots” party that may refuse to
actively support some of these people and will concentrate on more controversial positions, like saying “no” to torture.
History says that in time the Netroots
will succeed in taking over their party, and that the process will be
accelerated by “official” party successes.
