"First thing we do, let's kill all the moderates"

First off, I have no sympathy for Snarlin' Arlen Specter. He's made his own bed and am happy to see him, as Josh Marshall so nicely puts it, lose the privelege of sleeping in it.

But it is interesting to watch the hard right wing of the GOP veer even further to the right, spurred on by the assumed debt owed to "values voters," and begin to take shots at the more moderate wing of the party. One wonders if some of the Rockefeller Republicans from the Northeast are taking note of the call to put Specter in the stocks on the public square?

The Bull Moose, who knows a lot about the Right in general and the Christian Coalition specifically, and who's given me some comfort over the past week, has this to say.

If there wasn't a war, the Republican Party would be in shambles. Of course there is a war, so the elephant seems to be in its ascendancy. The current Republican triumphalism obscures problems within the party. But the latest brawl over Arlen Specter illuminates the tensions within the G.O.P. between social moderates and conservatives. Poor old Snarlin' Arlen could renounce both the Warren Commission and the "single bullet" theory and the righties would not be appeased.

As the Moose has previously written, the social conservatives are emboldened by their victory. And they should be. The increase in the percentage of conservative voters was Bush's salvation.

They literally believe the hand of God delivered this victory. Note these words by Paul Weyrich,

So God is indeed a Republican. He must be. His hand helped re-elect a President, with a popular mandate, whose job approval ratings were the lowest since ratings began of any President who has been re-elected. His hand helped re-elect a President in a country where "wrong track" was way ahead of "right track". His hand helped re-elect a President in a country where, in the rust belt and the South, millions of jobs have been lost.

I had no idea God was so stupid.

It's time for Dems to form alliances with the moderate wing of the Republican party, particularly if the latter has any hopes of returning to the path of fiscal discipline (the social conservatives are untroubled by deficits...shit, who cares about future revenues if the Rapture's a-comin'?).

Newt Gingrich talked about a Man Date for House Republicans in '94. It soon became evident he'd overreached. I am hopeful the same will happen with the Right this time around. But that only happens if Democrats can show some nimbleness and start to act like a true opposition party.