Blue Dogs Under the Bus? Go for it, Democrats!

You've got to love Glenn Greenwald. He provides conservatives with so much humorous fodder.

The latest example is Greenwald's call for progressives to target "Blue Dogs," the centrist Democrats who recently "caved" on FISA and are alleged to be "Beltway Democrats" increasing their own power by "mimicking Republicans."

The essay's gotten quite a response. Especially good is this from Jennifer Rubin:

In a piece filled with perfectly awful analysis and advice Glenn Greenwald says that the problem with Congress is that is was too accommodating of the evil agenda of George W. Bush. FISA passage is at the top of the list. If they hadn’t passed that bill, allowing terrorism surveillance to continue and had cut off funding for the war, they wouldn’t have poll numbers in the teens.

He offers no factual support for this, of course, and indeed polling showed that while the decision to go to war remains unpopular voters did not and still don’t favor a cut off of funds. And Greenwald assumes, again without data, that the public like Barack Obama is stewing that the surge worked — and now taking its wrath out on Congress. His solution? Punish the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, target them for defeat and run them out of town on a rail.

To that I say: oh please do. Let’s see them run Nancy Pelosi clones in the South, anti-gun advocates in Colorado and ultra-liberals in Pennsylvania and Ohio. (See, sometimes you forget that conservatives are not alone in their desire to so purify the party that they would winnow it down to a phone-booth size contingent of true believers.)

But, alas, I do not see any sign that the Democrats are following Greenwald’s advice. Unfortunately for the Republicans, Rahm Emanuel figured out that a party — at least one which seeks majority status — must be broad-based and willing to run people who can win in disparate parts of the country.

So on second thought, forget all the criticism. Go for it, Democrats! Throw the Blue Dogs out, vote to cut off funding for the surge and repeal FISA while you’re at it. And don’t you listen to those poll numbers about off-shore drilling either. It’s just a scheme by Fox news to get you to destroy the environment.

This is the biggest kick I've gotten from lampooning Greenwald since Megan McArdle noted that:

Mr. Greenwald's anger at the establishment power structure seems to be rapidly transmuting into anger at the non-Glenn-Greenwald power structure.

I took a bit more serious a stab at the progressive's attack on "Blue Dogs" in "The Left's Demonology of Vengeance."

Reading Rubin, though, is relaxing. I agree: Go for it, Democrats! LOL!!