There’s been a good deal of media attention focused on Tea Party activists’ fight against establishment Republicans, but Michael Barone uses his latest Washington Examiner column to explore another form of “intraparty civil war.”
[T]he real civil war this year is going on in the Democratic Party — and it is going largely unreported.
One reason is that it is not a clear-cut battle between two easily identifiable forces, like Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Grant’s Army of the Potomac. Rather, it resembles the guerrilla conflicts of the Civil War in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, with local self-starters scurrying about in all directions.
So in this month’s primaries we saw a skirmish between Arkansas Senate incumbent Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who suggested but did not quite promise he’d support the card check bill that would effectively abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections — and whose campaign received something like $1 million from unions. That race will be decided in the June 8 runoff.
Another incumbent challenged on the left was Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, who got only 55 percent in the Democrats’ state convention and could lose the June 22 primary to a supporter of the health care bill.
Pennsylvania Democrats rejected party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter, supported by the Obama White House, in favor of Rep. Joseph Sestak, who has a longer record of supporting Obama policies — but who after the primary declined to identify himself as an “Obama Democrat.”
The Democrats’ one big victory, in the Pennsylvania 12 special election, was won by a pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-health care bill, anti-cap-and-trade candidate. That platform sounds more Republican than Democratic.
