We're mainstream...

...they're extreme.

Matt Welch weighs in on the argument that the so-called "Michael Moore wing" of the Democratic Party is to blame for our losses. As he points out, that's a virtual non-entity, another straw man created by the radical right to cover up their own full embrace of political extremism. He offers examples...

Anyway, the main point is not to compare competing fringes, but mostly to point out that the Republicans' extremist fringe includes powerful senior elected politicians from their own party. Moore, for all his sitting-next-to-people action at the DNC, was not invited on the podium. Rick Santorum, the senator from Pennsylvania who has described outlawing gay marriage as "the ultimate Homeland security," gave a rousing speech to the Republicans. Tom Coburn, the new Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for abortion doctors, and held up Fidel Castro's forced AIDS camps as a model worth emulating. Jim DeMint, your new Senator from South Carolina, thinks that single pregnant women shouldn't teach in public schools. If Bush wanted to deliver a "Sister Souljah moment," embracing cross-over moderation at the expense of his own party's fringe, he wouldn't need to take a swipe at a non-politician like Ann Coulter -- he could start in the august hall of the Unites States Senate.

Yep. They're anything but 'conservative' in any classic formulation of that ideology. They're radical. They're extreme. Heck, some of them are even proud of it.