"It was the national security, stupid."
An excerpt:
Liberal hawk and blogger Michael Totten, who yesterday said that the Democratic party "is in shambles," outlines the imperative of carving out new space on the political left for dialogue on the issue.
"It is possible to be some kind of anti-Bush lefty and write thoughtful books and articles about national security without being a backseat heckler who opposes but offers no alternate vision. Paul Berman has managed to do it. But he labors away in an inhospitable left-wing environment that hardly has any room for him. For someone like me who doesn't have a lifetime's worth of street cred in the lefty press, I'm all but forced to play in the right's sandbox whether I like it or not. (But I don't dislike it as much as I did, and that's bad news for the Democrats. An entire genre of intellectuals like me exists and has a name -- neoconservatives -- because mine is all-too common a storyline.)
"These kinds of problems are self-reinforcing. The fewer intellectuals there are on the left who study military history and strategy, the less likely any otherwise left-minded person who is interested in such things will want or be able to work with or for liberals and Democrats. What has been happening is a nation-wide brain-drain from the left to the right -- at least in certain areas."
Though I enjoy the debate about legislating morality and respect for one's political opposite number, I suspect this remains the primary red-blue divide.
My rationale: In years of perusing blogs and engaging in political debates, my acquaintances are split rather evenly between conservatives and liberals. I can name many, many people who are socially/morally liberal, but held their noses and voted for Bush based on national security concerns. I can't name one socially conservative person who voted for Kerry for any reason whatsoever.
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