When a Love Affair is Over

Sad days at The Nation, where the editors recently explained -- right out in public, Todd Seavey-style -- why they had to break up with an old lover. Despite their longstanding admiration for the Republican Party, they now realize that"there will be no compromise with extremism. It must be challenged and defeated." For once, breaking with history, they believe that it's necessary to actually oppose Republican politicians and policies.

This is all new stuff, of course, caused by"the GOP's lurch toward extremism" since the party"has folded Ronald Reagan's 'big tent'." Remember how the editorial staff at The Nation loved Goldwater and Nixon? Remember their admiration for Reagan's"big tent" politics? Their abiding faith in the conservative mainstream? Because if you don't remember it, they certainly do (emphasis totally added, because I will eat a bug if this doesn't make you laugh out loud):

Whether or not voters like it—and polls suggest most do not—America is saddled with a two-party system. Historically, this has required both parties to keep the middle ground in sight. Some of the earliest critics of McCarthyism in the 1950s were Senator Joe McCarthy's fellow Republicans; and when the John Birch Society made its move within the GOP in the early 1960s, rebukes came not just from mainstream party leaders like Richard Nixon and George Romney but from conservative icons Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley.

No more.

By golly, back in the days of Watergate you could sit down like adults and find the middle ground. Mainstream party leaders like Richard Nixon wouldn't go for any partisan shenanigans, no sir! (G. Gordon Liddy? Absolutely a gentleman, I tell you! Just keep him away from psychiatry offices and candles.)

Favorite part, complete with condescending paternalism so broad as to simulate a pat on the head:

"Broadening the debate is fine. But when one party pulls that debate toward extremes that even its most radical leaders have recently rejected, the prospect of political dysfunction, if not explosion, grows exponentially."

Broadening debate is fine, as long as you don't, you know, broaden it. Broaden it all the way to the edges of the narrow centrist consensus-liberal band of pale vanilla District of Columbia respectability. Say your thought out loud: does Sally Quinn blanch over her mimosa? Too far, man, too far! No one in history has ever said anything like that before! (Now be polite, and offer to freshen up her drink.)

See also this paean to Everett Dirksen at the Huffington Post.

This is my favorite recurring lament of the political class: but they always agreed with us before! What happened?!? Ohhhh, whither the nonpartisan consensus of the past?

Someone show this campaign ad to the editors of The Nation, and see if they can place it in a historical context. I bet they just get a terrible headache.