Look around, the left has already tired of multilateralism, compromise, negotiation — they want action, with or without the help of potential allies. The Huffington Post has a banner headline “Ignore This Man,” a reference to this piece in the Hill about liberal activists pressuring Senate Democrats to move forward without Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley. “We are encouraging Finance Committee members and Senate Democrats to do their own bill and not compromise with a bunch of Republicans who are not going to vote with them anyway,” Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, tells the paper. There was some talk like that on the right about a second security council resolution on Iraq prior to the invasion.
Washington Monthly blogger Steve Benen asks, “shouldn’t this tell Democrats something about the utility of negotiations, and the futility of finding a bipartisan compromise?” Benen and other “progressives” support negotiation and compromise with Iran and North Korea, but Republicans? Forget about it.
Left-wing blogger “Digby” quotes Charlie Cook saying that the Blue Dogs may lose seats in 2010 over health care and says, “If Cook is right and the Dems maintain their majority while losing a bunch of these reactionary wingnuts, I couldn’t be happier.” This is the same kind of ideological purity demanded by the Club for Growth and mocked by liberals everywhere. Purge the moderates who get elected in tough districts!
The left doesn’t want a public option — they are demanding one, and threatening war with anyone who stands in their way, Democrats in the House, Republicans in the Senate, constituents, trade groups, anyone. The left has embraced unilateralism at the first hint of resistance to their hyper-ambitious plans to remake the world. And yet these same people believe that we can talk the Iranians out of a nuclear program, talk Hamas into recognizing Israel, talk the North Koreans into sanity. But they can’t even talk their own majority into passing a health care bill.
