The Wall Street Journal editorial board is pretty happy that conservative activists have taught the “GOP’s backroom boys” a lesson by forcing moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava out of the NY-23 congressional race in favor of right-wing darling Doug Hoffman. No surprise there. However, they also offer a warning:
But that lesson will be for naught if conservatives conclude that their victory is reason to challenge any candidate who doesn’t agree with them on every issue….Democrats did themselves no favors by driving Joe Lieberman out of their party, and conservatives will do their cause no good by forcing GOP candidates in Illinois, California and Connecticut to sound like Tom DeLay. If conservatives now revolt against every GOP candidate who disagrees with them on trade, immigration or abortion, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will keep their majorities for a very long time.
I sort of hate to admit this, but they’re right about Lieberman. It would have been great to get rid of him — and it was worth a try in a liberal state like Connecticut — but in the end all it did was make him even more embittered and more estranged from the party than before. As a result, he’s now loudly making the rounds of cable news shows promising to vote against cloture on any healthcare bill that includes a public option. As near as I can tell, this isn’t motivated by any ideological objection to the public option at all. It’s motivated mostly by fact that he’s still pissed off about how he was treated in 2006. If he’d been left alone and had won reelection as a Democrat, he’d probably be going along with the Democratic leadership on this with no real complaints.
You can’t win ’em all, I guess. And it was worth a try. But there’s also a price to pay when you don’t judge the chances of success with quite enough of a gimlet eye.
UPDATE: Sorry, I meant 2006, not 2008. Time sure flies, doesn’t it? I’ve corrected the text.
