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A Lesson for the Left, from the Tea Party.
Author: Raine    Date: 09/20/2010 13:08:09

Last week, I wrote a blog regarding the Tea Party telling the so called "establishment" of the GOP to STFU. This weekend in the opinion section of WaPo David Gergen offered a pointed critique of the Tea Party
Some conservatives have adopted the Bolshevik approach to information and the media: Every personal feeling, every independent thought, every inconvenient fact, must be subordinated to the party line -- the Tea Party line.

Second, the ferocity of this criticism indicates a growing arrogance. Tea Party purists, on the Internet and elsewhere, clearly believe their ascendance makes other elements of the conservative movement unnecessary.
This opinion is something many on the left could take heed to. A firestorm erupted a few weeks ago when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called out the "Professional Left" to which I responded in a blog post
I do believe there is a difference between pushing this administration and totally slamming it. I try to be pragmatic, considering the horrible waste this country was left in on January 20, 2009. There are those that have been consistently unhappy with everything it has done-- and I am not talking about the GOP or the Tea Party. Politics is about compromise, and -- especially in the Senate, we simply do not have the majority we need to get all the things we might want. Sometimes I get the feeling that some people want Obama to be the lefty version of the last President.

When you have progressives asking people to not vote, and to kill bills, this is not helping anyone. I can understand the frustration on both sides. The reality is the state of politics in this country today, when both the progressives and the White House are alienating people, then the GOP wins. Gibbs said something that perhaps needed to be said, and he said it terribly. But I don't think he was talking about you or me. I don't think he was talking about DKos, Keith Olberman or Rachel Maddow. I think he was talking about a select group of people or pundits. As Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, the left and the right think differently, he is correct, and that is where this communications arm of the White house consistently wrong.
We one the left would not be wise to sit back and smile smugly at what we are seeing with what is happening in the GOP with regards to the Tea Party-- we have some similar problems of our own. As I said back in August, when we alienate people within our own tent the GOP will win. That theory still remains true.

I say let the GOP figure out their own problems, since we have similar ones of our own. Gersan is right to say that when a party is overrun by political purists, the party suffers and ultimately the entire electorate. One of the reasons why the Democratic Party has been so popular over many decades is that it is a big tent, and I would like to see it remain that way. If it ceases to do so, it will resemble the GOP circa 2000 -- today we are seeing the manifestation of that party into what it is today as a result of unchecked party discipline: a radicalization of that party. Since January of 2009, the GOP has ignored the 'invisible elephant' in the room, it fed it, hoping to reap it's rewards, and instead, that elephant is charging at the masters who allowed it to grow.

We on the left should heed this lesson, purity in our party will simply hand the majority back to the GOP -- the very party whose ideology nearly brought this nation to it's knees. Imagine for a moment not just the GOP, but the Tea Party GOP in charge.

For all the talk of a Republican Majority come this fall, I believe there is still a great chance that we will retain the House and the Senate, but not by sitting back and pointing fingers at the other side, We must focus on listening and getting out the vote thru messaging. We must show people that we do not have purity tests, even tho some would have the voting public think otherwise. There is room for all voices in the Democratic Party, and there always should be. That said, there should be tolerance, even in disagreement. We see in the GOP what happens when tolerance is lost due to pure ideology.

They let the elephant grow from something non-existent to a monster -- and while we have a few jackasses under our tent, we should take heed and not let them define our party. There is simply too much at stake.

&

Raine





 

50 comments (Latest Comment: 09/21/2010 03:23:43 by Raine)
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