That’s not even in the vicinity of accuracy. 1) Greenwald claimed no such thing. In fact, he really claimed the opposite, i.e., that Bush and conservatism are seen as identical, such that anyone who criticizes Bush in any way is immediately cast out as a “liberal”; 2) Goldberg’s column is one of the thousands of counterexamples to Greenwald’s silly claim; Goldberg has criticized Bush (and not for the first time, by any means), but I’d be extremely surprised if anyone of any repute called Goldberg a “liberal,” any more than people are going around calling Pat Buchanan a “liberal.”

I don’t see a problem with this, except for the phraseology. Representing interests of ‘poor people’ (however defined) among other groups (minorities, women, etc.) is a legitimate role of a political party.

And this can’t really be “pay-to-play” if I understand the term correctly, because the poor people don’t have money to kick back to politicians, they can only vote.

So, how is it “the point to understand”? There seems to be this typical misconception here – underlying assumption that political parties are here to do this “public-spirited attempts to improve the commonweal” thing – they are not. Political parties represent segments of the population – at the expense of other segments. Simply speaking, on the most basic, crude level – either you take from the rich to give to the poor, or you take from the poor to give to the rich – end of story.

For public-spirited attempts to improve the commonweal you need apolitical public organizations.

derek at comment 7:
For what does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

John Holbo:
control of the government.

I would imagine that many Republican “conservatives” who have made their peace with Bush’s version of big government only see themselves as playing defense. They have to build their own giant political machines, or else the corrupt Democrats will rule forever, what with all their bribery of the electorate.

The Strom Thurmond of 1948 was not a Republican, but he became one in order to continue to defend Southron values.

Tim, the Dixiecrats became, for the most part, Republicans.

Much less looting and cronyism, a minimally rational economic plan, less than total hostility to environmentalist ideas, significantly less entusiasm for WWIV, no more sabotaging government to prove that government never works, no more demogoguery about stem cells, abortion, gay rights, and race —that’s as much as we can reasonably expect, and it adds up to mediocrity. But these days medicrity looks unattainable, like a vision of Heaven.

Lincoln’s time was quite short, ended in 1865. Within 10 years, by 1875, it’s no exaggeration to say about the GOP that the party … was about … getting the keys to the Treasury and looting it, … accepting bribes from businesses in return for government contracts.

There was even a fair amount of that going on during the Civil War though that was (presumably) not what the party was about at that time. For a few years after Lincoln’s death, the GOP was also about Reconstruction and trying to protect the rights of the freed slaves, but that did not last long.

Barry in #15 offers three examples of principled actions by the Democrats. Not a lot for the past 50 years really. And I’d quibble with two of them…the Dixiecrats (Southern Democrats I believe?) were the major constraint on the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War? Until Jan 1969 wasn’t it actually prosecuted by Democrats? The third? If Clinton is to be praised for tax raises, shouldn’t Bush I also be?