NYT: An Antiwar Campaign That Takes a Page From the G.O.P. Playbook
By SAM TANENHAUS
Published: August 13, 2006
....the (Lieberman/Lamont) campaign offers an intriguing twist in the history of insurgency that has shaped the identities of both parties over the last several decades. Some commentators have portrayed the bloggers who led the charge against Senator Lieberman as the ideological descendants of the left-wing Democrats who nearly brought the party to its knees in the 1960’s and 70’s. But in strategic terms they resemble more closely the “movement conservatives” who transformed the Republican Party from 1955 to 1980, when it rose to dominate American politics.
Like the current Democratic insurgency, the conservative movement was driven by activists who combined journalism with partisanship. Just as today’s insurgents often post their analyses and self-described “rants” on Web sites like Daily Kos, so the conservative rebels of an earlier day poured forth their opinions in the National Review, the biweekly magazine founded in 1955 by the 29-year-old William F. Buckley Jr....
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Before the Connecticut primary, the insurgents had achieved no significant victories. But like the conservative activists of an earlier time, today’s liberal insurgents seem undeterred by setbacks. After Goldwater’s devastating loss in 1964 to President Johnson, movement conservatives instantly regrouped, forming new organizations (like the American Conservative Union) and rallying around a new leader, Reagan....The new wave of activist liberals have also tasted defeat. Many were active in the insurgent presidential bid of Howard Dean in 2004. Like the Goldwater crusade in 1964, this failed campaign seemed to create a legacy. Mr. Dean’s ingenious use of the Web, for instance, resurfaced in the Internet-driven campaign that defeated Senator Lieberman. The advocacy group Democracy for America, which helped drive the Lamont campaign, is the latest incarnation of the organization that had brought millions into Mr. Dean’s candidacy.
All this has gone forward with little help from the Democratic establishment, which for years has played down ideology in its mission to recapture the elusive center of American politics. The party’s reigning figure is Bill Clinton, whose genius for splitting the differences between left and right, has proved so fleeting a philosophy that few other politicians have been able to duplicate it....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/weekinreview/13tanen.html