The Purge
August 23, 2012
Take a break from wondering what the media will concoct next to make Paul Ryan look dangerous, and reflect on what we learned last Tuesday. After all, the Republicans weren’t the only ones who had a primary.
What we learned is that those Democrats who were sufficiently interested to vote have learned nothing from their humiliation in the endless stream of elections during the past 22 months. Given choices between more or less conventional Liberals and candidates of the scorched-earth Left, Democratic primary voters went hard left every time.
They unhesitatingly cast their lot with the sort of people who have reduced their prospects of winning.
That probably won’t matter in some of the affected state legislative districts that have been reliably in the “D” column for generations. But everything has its breaking point and Democrats continue testing it, in a curiously self-destructive way.
Because what Democrats are really testing is the extent to which they can enforce absolute conformity of personal belief and expect their supporters to stick around.
State Rep. Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee) is the perfect case study. Fields was a faithful soldier for the Democratic side, voting over and over to block the Walker reforms. Just one problem: Fields supports school choice. The Leftists eliminated him. Fields is just one of several 99 percent ideologically pure legislative Democrats who felt the wrath of the Left last Tuesday.
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