The Pros And Cons Of A Progressive Tea Party

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Democrats don’t like to think about Republicans if they can help it. But for those on the left now contemplating their own “progressive tea party” movement, they’d do well to contemplate one woman in particular: Christine O’Donnell.

In 2010 Republicans had an unusual opportunity to win the deep-blue Delaware Senate seat once held by Joe Biden. The vessel: GOP Rep. Mike Castle, a popular former governor and the front-runner. Enter Ms. O’Donnell. Fueled by tea-party enthusiasm and money, she trashed Mr. Castle as a liberal and beat him in the primary. After a general election that devolved into debates over gay service members, religion, creationism (and even witchcraft), Democrat Chris Coons blew out Ms. O’Donnell by 17 points.

The conservative …show more content…

It’s doomed at every level—because it is entirely premised on the O’Donnell model.

More By Kimberley Strassel

Consider the recent rallying cry of progressive star Markos Moulitsas. “The Tea Party didn’t really become a force until it started ousting Republicans it didn’t feel represented them,” he told the New York Times. “Democrats either need to feed, nurture and aggressively champion the resistance, or they need to get out of the way in favor of someone who will.”

Message: Get with our agenda, or be purged. The progressives showing up for protests and demanding Supreme Court filibusters are determined to move their party aggressively to the left. Any Democrat who does not sign up for their policies and their resistance will face a primary.

Perhaps we can forgive Mr. Moulitsas—and much of East and West Coast America—for thinking this is what happened on the right. Democrats never bothered to understand the right’s tea-party movement, and it …show more content…

Activists in the main weren’t demanding the Republican Party become something new, or ultra-right-wing. They were demanding the party—beset at that time by logrolling, earmarks and corruption—simply hold true to its stated and longtime principles of free markets and limited government. It was a quest for a better-quality product, not a different one altogether.

That’s evidenced by where tea-party activists accomplished most of their successes. A few high-profile Senate missteps aside, activists targeted much of their fire on reliably conservative or gettable House districts, inhabited by lazy incumbents who cared mostly about staying in office. They focused on recruitment, and their new crop of reformers resulted in 2010 in one of the greatest incumbent turnovers in congressional history. Over the years, they have only gotten better at fielding and supporting winning candidates (see the 2014 Republican Senate takeover).

The Democrats’ problem is that all their reliably liberal states and districts are already occupied with good liberals, who take orders. Those members will joyfully boycott and filibuster and protest and obstruct. There will be no need for

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