no safety net—indeed

But these Republicans are not the ones who have driven the debate over the past sixyears. Instead of the “compassionate conservatism” that George Bush promised in his2000 campaign, what has characterized the ideological core of today’s GOP isabsolutism, not conservatism. There is the absolutism of the free market, an ideology ofno taxes, no regulation, no safety net—indeed, no government beyond what’s requiredto protect private property and provide for the national defense. 　　There’s the religious absolutism of the Christian right, a movement that gained tractionon the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into somethingmuch broader; a movement that insists not only that Christianity is America’s dominantfaith, but that a particular, fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy,overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberaltheologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of ThomasJefferson. 　　And there is the absolute belief in the authority of majority will, or at least those whoclaim power in the name of the majority—a disdain for those institutional checks (thecourts, the Constitution, the press, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of the Senate, orthe traditions governing redistricting) that might slow our inexorable march toward theNew Jerusalem. 　　Of course, there are those within the Democratic Party who tend toward similarzealotry. But those who do have never come close to possessing the power of a Rove ora DeLay, the power to take over the party, fill it with loyalists, and enshrine some oftheir more radical ideas into law. The prevalence of regional, ethnic, and economicdifferences within the party, the electoral map and the structure of the Senate, the needto raise money from economic elites to finance elections—all these things tend toprevent those Democrats in office from straying too far from the center. In fact, I knowvery few elected Democrats who neatly fit the liberal caricature; the last I checked, JohnKerry believes in maintaining the superiority of the U.S. military, Hillary Clintonbelieves in the virtues of capitalism, and just about every member of the CongressionalBlack Caucus believes Jesus Christ died for his or her sins. 　　Instead, we Democrats are just, well, confused.