OPINION:
Hopeful-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a group of progressive-minded people who have rallied about her, supported her selection to the leadership post — and promised to take revenge on those who try to elect another.
That’s called tolerance, Democratic style.
Speak freely — but only if the speech is in line with our will.
Honestly, how about some harmony for a season? Pelosi’s progressives, it seems, have in mind a different path.
“If right-wing Democrats end up helping Republicans by voting against Nancy Pelosi as speaker,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for MoveOn, in an interview with The Daily Beast, “they can expect to face serious backlash from the same energized and mobilized base of progressive voters that just brought Democrats a majority in the House.”
It’s one thing to campaign for a favorite official. But it’s another thing — isn’t it? — to outright threaten political destruction against officials who don’t toe the demanded line.
That’s not voting. That’s blackmail.
And it simply shows how far left the Democratic Party has pulled.
Once upon a time — once upon, say, a John F. Kennedy time — the radical element did not dictate party policy and platform to those on the ideological liberal side. Various voices bringing varieties of thoughts were actually allowed.
Now?
Moderates need not apply.
The Democrats, if they want to become more than a landing zone for the thug element — if they want to be known for more than a cloak and cover for the antifa types who use the First Amendment for violent designs — then they must expand their party to include, nay welcome, the cooler heads of the left, the calmer thinkers that can be carved from the independents.
Else it’s business as usual.
The rhetoric will only ratchet. The thuggery in the streets will only continue. The nation’s discord and divisiveness will only become worse.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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