I blog so I don't have to do taxes.

Marshall Wittman wrote in the Bull Moose Blog, a DLC-affiliated blog, about how the left supposedly puts partisan politics above the good of the country:

...The American left is increasingly moving toward the position that there is only one threat to our security in the world. Not the jihadists. Not the Iranian leader who denies the holocaust and his mullah buddies.

No, the only foe of the left is W., and if the Iranians get the bomb, so be it. This is the partisanship of fools.

To which Daniel McKivergan, of the Weekly Standard, a Republican publication, responded:

Give that man a raise!

Which brings me to the point of this post: Republican sponsorship of the DLC. Despite being obstinately Democrat, they recieve funding from prominent Republican sources like the Coors family and others. (See this Rightweb profile for more.) Their strategy is to set up a Democratic 'straw man' that challenges the right in appearances more than reality - and so far it's been working.

What (real) Democrats need to do is support equitable government funding of think tanks, so that they're not beholden to rich Republicans like that. Once we have a credible ideological base, we'll be able to tell people like Wittman to just go ahead and vote Republican, even while keeping more middle-of-the-road Democrats who may not quite be ready to go for everything we would endorse.