After months of hoo ha about the radical transformation of politics in the internet age, much-hyped challenges to politics as usual in a number of States, and desperate waffling by main-stream politicos, things seem to be stabilizing.
The Lamont defeat of Senator Lieberman in Connecticut, and the grassroots Republican revolt in Pennsylvania that unseated a number of prominent State legislators, turn out not to have been the harbingers of a new, radical politics.
Instead, in the most recent round of primaries (most importantly in Rhode Island and Maryland) mainstream party organizations, both Republican and Democrat, have beaten back challenges from candidates with radical resumes. At the same time Bush, a Republican moderate, is again climbing in the polls while newly minted moderate Hillary has cruised to a crushing win in New York; moderate Senator Lieberman is holding a comfortable lead over his lefty tormentor, anti-immigration is fading as an issue, and radical voices from both the left and right are slowly being marginalized. The moderate middle is reasserting itself, and the Republic is better for it.
So much for the "politics of principle."
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