Lamont's Victory Good for Republicans Election Hopes

The Death of Triangulation

By Eli Pariser
Thursday, August 10, 2006; Page A23

Ned Lamont's victory Tuesday night in Connecticut's U.S. Senate primary is great news for Democrats. And it's a watershed moment for the growing majority of Americans, in red states and blue, who want change.

For months, polls have warned that across the political spectrum people are fed up -- with the no-end-in-sight occupation of Iraq; with an energy policy that caters to oil giants while gasoline prices soar; with a health-care system that leaves more behind with every passing day. Lamont's victory is evidence that a long-awaited wave of voter sentiment on those issues has materialized.

It's certainly understandable that Republicans would prefer to see Democrats continue to run the temporizing candidates whom they've had little trouble trouncing for the past decade. But you'd think Democratic strategists would be jumping for joy -- after all, they should be able to ride the anti-incumbent feeling to victory in November. Instead, we hear the perennial pundit nattering about moving the party too far to the left. And Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council -- who stubbornly refuses to address the real civil war in Iraq -- invokes the specter of a domestic civil war within the party.

That's because while Lamont's victory is a promising development, it marks the beginning of the end for an old favorite of Washington insiders -- the tactics of triangulation. Originally employed as a survival strategy by a Democratic president in the wake of 1994's Republican revolution, the policy of seizing the political middle ground no longer makes sense in an era when any attempt at bipartisanship is understood as a sign of Democratic weakness and exploited accordingly.

Delusion is endemic in the American Left and Eli is a perfect example. He dismisses the argument that the Democrat Party is moving too far to the Left in the face of history's evidence to the contrary. This sudden lurch to the Left is going to be the salvation of the Republican Party, who left to their own devices would fumble the election ball.

The policies advocated by those on the Left-the Democrats-have been consistently rejected by the American voter. We enjoy our freedom and affluence far too much to allow a bunch of socialist morons to take over the government. We have seen the effect of huge government give-aways on the people and economy of America. We have witnessed the destruction of the poor black and poor white families as a result of misguided welfare generosity. We have seen the effect of profligate spending by the government.

Lamont's victory is the best news Republicans could have hoped for.

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