{"id":4694,"date":"2010-04-09T14:45:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T18:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=4694"},"modified":"2010-04-09T17:42:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T21:42:09","slug":"retirements-aplenty-for-iconoclastic-political-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/4694\/retirements-aplenty-for-iconoclastic-political-figures\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirements Aplenty for Iconoclastic Political Figures"},"content":{"rendered":"

How interesting that the Age of Obama is bringing about the demise of \u201ccentrist\u201d Democrats.\u00a0 The flurry of retirements from the House of Representatives this session come almost completely from the South and Midwest, once the cradle of Democratic congressional leaders.\u00a0 Now, members like Marion Berry<\/a> (D-AR) and Bart Stupak<\/a> (D-MI) are retiring from politics after years of finding their social conservatism unwelcome in an increasingly secularist Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Many Americans outside Stupak\u2019s congressional district were surprised to find an ardent pro-life Democrat still getting elected to public office.\u00a0 Even more startling was his stance on ObamaCare: he wants a single-payer system; he just doesn\u2019t want federal funding for abortions.\u00a0 With his retirement announcement today, America isn\u2019t likely to see another high profile Democrat willing to risk curtailing the growth of leviathan for what amounts to a religious conviction.<\/p>\n

Then there is Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.\u00a0 His retirement<\/a>, along with former Justice David Souter\u2019s last year<\/a>, will probably be the last to involve a court member of one party leaving the bench so that a president of the other party can appoint his replacement.\u00a0 Make no mistake; had Senator John Kerry (D-MA) won the presidency in 2004, neither Souter nor Stevens would have waited this long to leave.<\/p>\n

So with Stupak and Stevens exiting Stage Left, there are now two more examples of the sharp, rigid partisanship that President Barack Obama has brought to our politics.\u00a0 After all the election spin about post-partisanship, the only change he gave us was a historical dividing line between politics as people with ideas, and politics as parties with agendas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How interesting that the Age of Obama is bringing about the demise of \u201ccentrist\u201d Democrats.\u00a0 The flurry of retirements from the House of Representatives this session come almost completely from the South and Midwest, once the cradle of Democratic congressional leaders.\u00a0 Now, members like Marion Berry (D-AR) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) are retiring from politics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,943,1093,646,717],"class_list":["post-4694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-bart-stupak","tag-david-souter","tag-democratic-party","tag-john-paul-stevens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4694"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4702,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694\/revisions\/4702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}