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It’s About Power. Full Stop.

Joyner, this morning [1]:

Via Glenn Reynolds [2], I see that Paul Kotkin [3] has written an interesting essay on an “internal civil war” [Is there another kind? -ed.] looming within the Democratic Party:

This is the Democratic Party’s moment, its power now greater than any time since the mid-1960s. But do not expect smooth sailing. The party is a fractious group divided by competing interests, factions and constituencies that could explode into a civil war, especially when it comes to energy and the environment.

Broadly speaking, there is a long-standing conflict inside the Democratic Party between gentry liberals and populists. This division is not the same as in the 1960s, when the major conflicts revolved around culture and race as well as on foreign policy. Today the emerging fault-lines follow mostly regional, geographical and, most importantly, class differences.
Gentry liberals cluster largely in cities, wealthy suburbs and college towns. They include disproportionately those with graduate educations and people living on the coasts. Populists tend to be located more in middle- and working-class suburbs, the Great Plains and industrial Midwest. They include a wider spectrum of Americans, including many whose political views are somewhat changeable and less subject to ideological rigor.

This is, broadly speaking, right. Small problem, though: With light editing, one could write exactly the same kind of essay about the Republican party.

(Chuckle)

One can easily expect somebody from the democrat party to say that this is the unkindest cut of all.  James makes other points about this, all valid,  but the one point that he seems to miss is the one about power.

What we have here, is merely an extension of what we’ve been seeing along with the Democrats.  Their stated goals, their stated purposes, what they tell us they’re going to do and why, all fall victim to the knife, sacrificed on the altar of raw, unadulterated power. Which tells us point blank that’s all this was ever about, all along.

I would add that to the extent that James is correct, where this thing applies to the Republicans as well, you should note that the conflicts within the Republican Party along those lines and up being almost to a man, conflicts between the grass roots and the far left of the Republican party.

See, that’s the thing about governmental power.  The founders knew that it was an addictive poison.  That’s why they designed the constitution specifically to limit governmental power.  To the extent that we don’t have limited government, is the exact extent to which the Constitution, and those wishes of the founders, have been bypassed.

Perhaps the perceived prevalence of power grabbing being greater amongst liberals, has something to do with their regarding the Constitution as a “living document” .

Edit: Bit, fixed droped blockquote tag