Cannibal Chic

Kimberley Strassel starts off her column this week with what she says is now Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar's favorite Lyndon Johnson quote: "You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals only eat their enemies." The subject of the column is both Representative Cuellar and the netroots. Specifically the rigidly authoritarian attempts by the netroots to stifle any Democrat who does not toe the netroots' line.

Mr. Cuellar would know, having found himself the main course on liberals' election menu just last year. A centrist Democrat who is pro-business, free-trade and strong on law enforcement, the congressman was designated an apostate by the left-wing Netroots crowd. They decamped to his district and bankrolled a liberal primary challenger. Mr. Cuellar triumphed, though Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas would later swagger on his blog: "So we didn't kill off Cuellar. But we gave him a whooping where none was expected and made him sweat."

Which is the point. If the liberal blogging phenomenon deserves to be known for anything, it is the strategy to intimidate or silence anyone who disagrees with its own out-of-the-mainstream views. That muzzling has been on full display in recent weeks as Mr. Moulitsas and fellow online speech police have launched a campaign against the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. DLC Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. was even thwacked last week for daring to speak to this editorial page (my sincere apologies, Mr. Ford)–the clear goal to discourage him from making such a free-speech mistake again.

Yet a lively midweek chat with Mr. Cuellar suggests that this campaign of threats isn't necessarily having the intended effect. If anything, it might be backfiring. "They win when they intimidate people," says Mr. Cuellar. "I've taken everything they've thrown, plus their kitchen sink, and I still stand proud as a moderate-conservative Democrat." He says his triumph over blogger fire has only strengthened his conviction that his party will only win elections if it continues to be a "big tent" open to all views. "To make that tent smaller, to force people–not to persuade, but to force, because these are threats–to quiet down, that's destructive in the long term and the short term."

Read it all, it is a good look at the cannibal chic of the left. Many of us on the right side of the sphere have noted this for quite some time. (And I rather suspect Cuellar is about to be savaged even more for daring to speak to Strassel - and especially for tweaking the netroots.) I saw something yesterday where Larry Sabato said that the left's echo chamber was a powerful counterweight to the right's dominance of talk radio. Maybe so, but at least some Democrats - like Cuellar - are not bowing in that direction. Despite the crowing from the left, it was moderate Democrats who made the real difference in 2006. Democrats who fail to remember that might be in for a surprise.