The rise of free-market populism in this country finally has manifested in an election. And judging from the hyperbolic reactions, you know it’s a political movement with staying power.
When tepid, traditional conservative candidate Doug Hoffman knocked off liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava—a candidate who was supported by nearly every boogeyman in the GOP handbook—you might have thought that the rabble had stormed the Bastille.
Sophisticated New York Times columnist Frank Rich called the event “a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war” and compared the conservative surge to a murderous Stalinist purge. (Remarkably, the esteemed wordsmith failed to unleash similar histrionic language when one-time-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman met the same fate.)
Purging moderates is indeed a self-destructive strategy for any national party. But running a party without any litmus tests on the central issue of the economy seems to be similarly self-defeating.
The most impressive trick played by Rich and other liberals, though, is creating a narrative wherein the ones attempting to fundamentally reconfigure the American economy are cast as the moderates.
The nearly powerless who stand in their way? Well, they play the part of Stalinists.
But of course, as Orwell pointed out, the real Stalinists are the people who torture the language like Frank Rich does.
We’ve got one of those. It loses elections.
Now that I think about it a little more, I realize that Reason has got it all wrong. Economic liberals (as opposed to the “liberal” Marxists in the Dem Party) are a faction, not a Party, and they usually vote Republican already.
The problem is that there are precious few economic liberals in the Republican leadership. Those guys are part of the “Washington Faction”, along with the Dem leadership, whose primary interests are spending, earmarks and kick-backs. The only thing they disagree with the Dems on is “How much should we bilk them for?”
I think Coburn is one of the few guys in the Senate not a member of that faction.
Reason is also wrong to think everyone on the GOP’s big tent agrees with economic liberalism. The social conservatives like Huckabee can be as Marxist as any Dem.
Economic liberalism is a real faction in American politics, and always has been. It just can’t seem to form a winning coalition that actually addresses its grievances.