FINDING THE NEXT CAMERON:

Third Way fights for role in party (JAMES HOHMANN, 11/2/10, Politico)

“The party is about to come to a major fork in the road,” said Jonathan Cowan, Third Way’s president. “A left turn at this juncture is a turn toward permanent minority status.”

The group’s efforts reflect the underlying tension President Barack Obama faces as he heads into the last two years of his first term. Liberals say there’s an enthusiasm gap with Republicans because Democrats are disappointed that the party was too timid about the size of the stimulus, compromised on the public option in health care reform and ran away from its accomplishments. Those closer to the middle say a more moderate face for the party is the only hope to win back independents, reelect Obama and retake the House in 2012, assuming it is lost Tuesday.

Cowan’s group wants to play a role in 2011 akin to the Democratic Leadership Council’s in 1995. Then, the last time Democrats lost the House, President Bill Clinton’s willingness to “triangulate” between traditional Democratic orthodoxies and the Republicans who controlled Congress led to welfare reform, community policing and a slew of smaller accomplishments that helped propel Clinton to a second term.

Politics is rather uniform across the Anglosphere. You ride a Third Way reformer to power but the ideologues within the party eventually cripple or turn on him. If the other party has a leader sufficiently similar to him they are poised to replace you when you finally kill the king. Then the whole process resumes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 2, 2010 4:31 AM