"Oligarchy's lies never die, while political truth is strangled every day"

We must reintroduce the late Walter Karp, whose gimlet-eyed view of what was going on with Reagan and the congressional Democrats of his time was the most invaluable political analysis of the time. Karp saw that what actually was happening was that O'Neill and the Democrats were willing to sell out a lot of what had defined them as a party for the previous 50 years. It was Karp who first warned progressives against the dangerous narcotic effects of "centrism." 

The great task of keeping the plain people stifled falls, as always, to the popular party, and the popular party has been laying its plans well, elaborating and perfecting them with tireless devotion since the 1984 elections.  

We must make of ourselves a "centrist" party, a "moderate" party, a "consensus" party, cry the leaders of the popular party in unison, not a single voice raised in audible dissent.  

We must "shed our ultra-liberal image," cry the party oligarchs after four years of colluding with the Right. We must set ourselves upon "an irresistible course toward moderation," says a "conservative" southern governor.  

We "will have to swing sharply toward the center of the political spectrum," cries the president of the ubiquitous, tireless Coalition for a Democratic Majority. "We must move in a more moderate centrist direction," says one Nathan Landow, party banker and broker and "liberal" promoter of the 1984 candidacy of poor Walter Mondale.  

The new party "centrism" is to be established under the guidance of the newly formed Democratic leadership Council ...... Centrism is a purgative, antidote to "leftism." It calls for the purging of noncentrists, of "leftists," of "factions" of "liberal activists" and "special interests" and all bearers of "the new strain of neo-isolationism" until the popular party is free of every last vestige of freeness.  

"Centrism" is a victory strategy. We must win back southern white voters to the party fold, say the centrists. We must say nothing and do nothing and be nothing save what will contribute to the great southern white wooing, to the final production of a "centrist presidential candidate who will not offend the political and cultural sensibilities of southern voters"...  

Centrism is a new party platform set forth by the new Democratic Policy Commission, packed, as a matter of course, with "centrists" by Kirk, to supply "a broader agenda of the Democratic Party and the nation." Let us have done with "the singular agenda of elite groups," says Kirk, pressing into service Kirkpatrick's great Political Science discovery of 1972: Oligarchy is democratic and democracy is "elitist," for Oligarchy's lies never die, while political truth is strangled every day. 

Of course, Reagan and O'Neill got along. Reagan was sharp enough to know that O'Neill was willing to sell out enough of the traditional Democratic party to give Reagan most of what he wanted. The reason Bill Clinton got the awful welfare "reform" deal together with Newt Gingrich and his group of Republicans was because the Republicans got a lot of what they wanted. However, at this current moment in history, the Republicans repeatedly vote against what previously were their own ideas — on health-care, on education, on immigration — simply because this particular president has proposed them.