The Waxman Democrats

Echoing my post from yesterday comes the following article by the Wall Street Journal. As I put it in my post, the ouster of Dingell in favor of Waxman was "another great day for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party of America, but probably another bad day for America," and the WSJ also has picked up that the Waxman election shows that the Democratic Party is now thoroughly a tool of the far left environmentalists. Traditional liberals (Dingell), traditional Democrats (Lieberman), moderates (increasingly marginalized), and conservatives (long gone) no longer have a home in the new Democratic Party.

Quoting from the Wall Street Journal article:

John Dingell's fall from power yesterday is an important inflection point in the history of the modern Democratic Party. The House purge marks the final triumph of the Congressional generation that came of political age during the 1970s over the last lion of New Deal liberalism, and it is symbolic of the party's change in culture and policy priorities in the Barack Obama era.

That fissure neatly separates the Waxman Democrats from the old vanguard that Mr. Dingell represents. He was first elected in 1955 and has always tried to protect his hometown Detroit auto makers from the eco-mandates that ultimately helped to land them in their present predicament. Mr. Dingell's rough-hewn candor about the realities of "doing something" about climate change also helped to make him a green pariah. He knows that carbon regulation and taxes will fall most heavily on domestic manufacturing and Midwest states that rely on coal-fired power. His sympathies lie with the people who work near (or in) factories and drive Fords or Chevys.

Mr. Waxman, speaking for the upscale precincts of Beverly Hills, wants to phase out coal and cars that use gasoline. The coastal elites who now dominate Democratic politics will happily trade the blue collar for the green collar.

The irony is that Democrats have found, in Mr. Waxman, an even more extreme antibusiness tribune, who will no doubt use his new powers to go after any concern that turns a profit but refuses to pay his party the obeisance of campaign cash and regulatory submission.

Again, the removal of Dingell means that if you or anyone you know votes Democrat, they need to realize that they are empowering a party that is against industry, against Midwestern values, against energy production, and does not believe in a limited government. Voting Democrat means putting in power a party that resembles the parties of the rest of the world- a party that uses the power of government to redistribute wealth to its friends. The Democratic half of America is no longer exceptional- one can only hope that the Republican Party rediscovers its exceptionalism and the exceptionalism of America.