For a refresher on my prognostication click here.
The first step toward political irrelevancy is to purge those who do not hold to the orthodoxy. Essentially, the temptation is to say that one vision got the party to where it is, and to hell (or Hell depending on to whom you speak) with those who don't toe the line. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has earned the wrath of social conservatives for his split with President Bush over federal funds for fetal stem cell research. Sen. Frist's new position is, in my mind, more in keeping with that of a physician, which is the Senator's pre-political career. Based on this decision, which can easily by argued as coming from his own understanding of the medical issues involved, he is now being pilloried by his party. I wonder how many votes the Republicans lost among those ambivalent on the issue?
Bill at INDC Journal makes a very effective argument regarding the moralistic points made at Redstate. The denial that some people can see an issue as too complicated to fit on a bumper sticker has doomed the Left for the past decade, and it seems to have taken root on the Right this decade.
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