Robert Tracinski

Robert Tracinski: "In the last week, American politics has seen an intra-party civil war in which radicals have been willing to sacrifice the party's moderates for the sake of ideological purity.

No, I'm not talking about the Republicans. The dust-up in New York's 23rd congressional district, where conservatives rebelled against a Republican candidate who was too far to the left, was an anomaly caused by the lack of a party primary, which would have weeded out a candidate who didn't have the support of the party's base.

No, it's the Democrats who are really in a civil war, and it's not some temporary anomaly. It is inherent in the Democrats' central business in Congress this year.

Politically speaking, the essence of Saturday's health-care vote was the mass sacrifice of at least 40 Democrats who were cajoled into voting for Nancy Pelosi's bill—even though many of them are nearly certain to lose their seats next year because of it. Even Democrats who voted 'no' are still in trouble because Obama's health-care push is making all Democrats unpopular in their home districts. In short, moderate Democrats are being used as cannon fodder by the far-left House leadership, bi-coastal types like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi who don't have to worry about losing their seats.

But much more is being sacrificed in this bill than the careers of a few lousy politicians.

The whole bill is a disaster, a monstrosity. It represents a giant permanent increase in government spending and therefore an enormous increase in an already unsustainable federal debt. This is masked by dishonest accounting, a kind of Ponzi scheme in which taxes are levied early on while benefits are delayed, making the program look solvent in the short term but ensuring that it will go bankrupt in the long term."