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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (36054)	8/6/2002 6:08:30 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't know that site very well. Friends have recommended it but I have spent little time there. So I can't really say how credible they are. However, let's assume they are. Then, I gather, the question is why so little left representation on those Senate Iraq panels. My guess is that it has to do with changes in the Democratic party. Since the early 70s, there have been two related processes which have limited the access of the left to the national scene. The first is that aggressive fund raising commitments which made the party more dependent on large money donations. The second has been the growing importance of the Democratic Leadership Conference (Clinton, Gore, Lieberman, to name just a few), which bills itself as moderate. Actually, as I type, it occurs to me there is a third factor which is more a constant than a variable. The foreign policy specialists in any administration, regardless of party, tend to be drawn from the reasonably broad group of experts that circulate back and forth. The somewhat more conservative members of the group staff Republican administrations; the somewhat less conservative members staff the Democratic. The present Bush administration, in my view, is an exception to that rule. Thus, though back to the rule, foreign policy, when the Dems are in power, tends not to be populated by the more left members of the party. Those tend to staff the domestic sides of the equation. Perhaps Tek would like to comment on this analysis.