The Purge Bingers

Those either worried or jubilant about the reported GOP "purge" in NY-23 may be advised to dial back their certainty-meters a notch or three when it comes to figuring out What It All Means for the future of American politics. For a case study of why, harken back to those long-ago days of 2006, when the same dance was being performed around a Connecticut senatorial primary between Vinegar Joe Lieberman and netroots All-Star Ned Lamont.

One of that season's many Concerned Partisans was the Fox-buryin', libertarian-hatin' Slate sourpuss Jacob Weisberg. Step back and admire the spectacular wrongness of a column entitled "Dead With Ned: Why Lamont's victory spells Democratic disaster."

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections. But you can hardly read too much into Ned Lamont's defeat of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Aug. 8 primary. This is a signal event that will have a huge and lasting negative impact on the Democratic Party. The result suggests that instead of capitalizing on the massive failures of the Bush administration, Democrats are poised to re-enact a version of the Vietnam-era drama that helped them lose five out six presidential elections between 1968 and the end of the Cold War.

Whoops! And, obviously, the WTFness was easy to encounter on the opposing team, too. Look back upon David Horowitz, and smile:

America is not divided enough for the American Left, which is now in full purge mode in Connecticut, where it is attempting to bring down the one statesman in the Democratic Party who might re-unite this country in the face of its enemies.