BUSHCO….As everyone knows, the Democratic Leadership Council is the steward of modern, centrist liberalism, spending the bulk of its time urging Democrats to follow in Bill Clinton’s hawkish, third way, values-loving footsteps. Love ’em or hate ’em, the DLC is the voice of the moderate wing of the Democratic party.
Here’s what Ed Kilgore, the DLC’s policy director, had to say about the election yesterday:
I came to believe strongly that the real agenda of the people closest to Bush–including his political advisors and much of the Republican congressional leadership–was not only dishonest, but deeply cynical and irresponsible: a drive to simultaneously wreck the federal government and to perpetuate their control over the wreckage as long as possible through the exercise of the rawest sort of institutional power and corruption.
Kilgore is part of a remarkable phenomenon: the radicalizing of the center left. He’s part of a crowd that includes people like Paul Krugman, Al Franken, Howard Dean, Atrios, and, um, me: liberals who are basically fairly moderate in policy terms but who have been appalled to discover that what seems unthinkable actually appears to be true. The modern Republican party really does seem to want to wreck the federal government.
I guess I should have more to say about this, but I don’t at the moment. It just seems salutary to point this out once in a while. Thanks, Ed.
