Another Democrat Purge

Just to keep the score Bruce Bartlett reviews the number of occasions in the last 70 years since the high water mark of 1936 when the Democrats decided to expel some of their own.

It started in 1938 when FDR tried to purge the Southern Democrats in the off-year election. It didn’t work.

As a result of the failed purge, Roosevelt found his power in Congress substantially diminished after 1938. Southern Democrats were increasingly willing to oppose him, even joining with Republicans to do so.

In 1964, after the Civil Rights Acts, the South voted for Goldwater for president but still stayed in the Democratic column for Congress.

Then Democrats drove the cold-war warriors out of the party in the early 1970s.

The Democrats finally succeeded in purging the Southern Democrats in the years after 1974.

After winning huge majorities in Congress in 1974 and 1976, they mounted a purge of Southern Democrats, removing many from committee chairmanships. The Southerners had nothing to gain by being Democrats.

So Republicans put money and talent into the South in the 1980s and began moving the South into the Republican column.

From this history, it is clear past Democratic purges have only aided the Republican Party. I suspect the purge of Mr. Lieberman may have the same effect, possibly turning what might have been solid gains by the Democrats in this fall's elections into modest gains.

Or maybe not. The Republicans have had their splits too. Teddy Roosevelt split the party in 1912, and the conservatives defeated the Rockefeller Republicans in the bitter battles for the soul of the party prior to the sunny Reagan years. Now Republicans complain about RINOs, Republicans In Name Only.

The difference between the Democrats purging Lieberman and the Republican efforts to purge Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is that Lieberman is a Democrat who votes like a Democrat except on Iraq. But Chafee is a Republican who votes like a Democrat.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0