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.
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