Four Square America

WaPo's Charles Lane argues there's now four political parties:  The Teabaggers, the RINOs, the ConservaDems, and the Dirty F'ckin Hippies.

Now, however, under the Internet-intensified pressure of recession, terrorism and global uncertainty, the four parties are breaking out of the two-party mold that had previously contained them. On the Democratic side, President Obama finds himself torn between progressives demanding an ideologically pure health-care program, among other agenda items, and a pragmatic wing desperately attempting to hold together 60 Senate votes by whatever means necessary. On the Republican side, it's unclear whether the party's right wing is angrier at Obama or at its own leadership. Certainly the fury of the Tea Party and similar groups threatens here and there to overwhelm more conventional conservatives (just ask Charlie Crist in Florida).

Dodd, Dorgan and Ritter are victims of the four-way crack-up in the following sense: off-year elections are low-turnout affairs that often hinge on who has the most motivated voter base. In 2010, the Democratic left is turned off while the Republican right is fired up. These three political warhorses could not win under those circumstances. But if the Republicans benefit this fall, their gains may be transitory: their own internal split may flare up once they have to decide how to use their new power.

Small wonder that we are seeing so much churning in the political class, as various incumbents either switch parties or retire prematurely -- while both parties emphasize recruitment of fresh blood and contemplate such unorthodox measures as the Democrats' rumored courting of Tennessean Harold Ford Jr. to run for U.S. Senate in New York.

Where could it all lead? The past is not prologue, but party instability of this magnitude could be the harbinger of even bigger changes. The U.S. political system actually fractured into four major parties in 1860 -- and we all know what happened next.

An interesting assessment.  But relating the progressive movement to the tea party movement is just a false analogy, as is assuming it's the Democratic party splitting into warring factions.  Moderates are not being thrown out of the party en masse.

In other words, Jane Hamsher does not equal Erick Erickson.  I will agree though that incumbents of both parties are in trouble, however.  But you're not seeing Taylor Marsh headlining a national convention next month saying that she'd rather have 30 Dems in the Senate who are "ideologically pure" than the 60 we have now.

There's three parties, the Dems, the GOP, and the We're Pissed.