The parliamentarization of the Democratic Party

 The early signs are here. One of the major tools that the GOP uses to discipline its caucus is the threat of a primary challenge financed by (say) the Club for Growth. Well, now the Democrats are starting to do the same thing, financing primary challenges via Act Blue. Blanche Lincoln, a very conservative Democrat, is now facing a very serious challenge from Bill Halter. Halter is openly running at Lincoln from the left.

It will be important to realize that parliamentarization doesn't necessarily mean radicalization. Support for the Afghan War or nuclear power could easily remain in the party platform. Similarly, the parliamentary GOP could move back towards the center. But parliamentarization does mean increasing party discipline ... and an ever-decreasing importance of the individual versus the party.

No, one vote by Senator Scott Brown for a teeny tiny $15 billion jobs bill, quite literally watered down by an order of magnitude from what the President initially suggested, does not count as rebellion. Vote the letter, not the person.

Comments

[Andrew R.]

I still wonder if a parliarmentarization of the Democrats would be all that possible. At the moment, the parliamentizing efforts you're pointing to are intended to move the party to the left. You've got efforts to punish Democrats who go to far to the center or the right, and of course, the grand-daddy of these efforts in Lamont's attempt to punish Lieberman for his support of the Iraq war.

This effort, however, is happening at the same time that a lot of right-leaning people are migrating to the party of Not Crazy. I'm not sure how well someone who, all things being equal, would prefer a liberal Republican but is currently voting Democrat is going to find that much common ground with the person who can quote chapter and verse of Manufacturing Consent.

[Scott Blair]

Are the people who are primarying Lincoln relaly people who read "Manufacturing Consent"?

I dunno, I'd like to see more cases of this before we think the Democrats are parliamentarizing. Yea, Bayh retired, but the guy who's replacing him is if anything to his right.

(And how do you use italics on typepad? Hrm).

[Andrew R.]

Sorry, Scott (and readers), I was exaggerating somewhat to be illustrative.

[Luke]

The Lincoln Primary is blowback from her picking a fight with Labor over EFCA; she was never going to work for it, cause Arkansas is a "Right to Work" State, but when she tried to win points by being a *loud* opponent of EFCA.

Noel; I'd be really wary of analogizing Act Blue to Club for Growth, especially since this case renders a false positive (Labor is getting in her grill), but additionally, Act Blue doesn't have as strongly centralized a nervous system as The Club for Growth--though MoveOn is in the mix here, it's not an instigator. But it's frankly, overall, a nice play; her numbers are still gonna suck, she can dance around, the White House can offer her Ambassadorship to Tahiti, and she can vote for health care, we can all go home.

These are really sort of straws in the wind; I'd be reluctant to call it until the Caucus reforms its bylaws regarding gavels to really get into the mix, or if OFA were showing up on an incumbent's doorstep with a primary challenge, I'd also be down. OFA 2.0 has turned out to be a real dud, but not for the reasons people think.