Sometimes history comes with previews. In the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War served as a precursor to the global conflict that was World War II. And in a smaller fashion, the primary battle playing out on the smiling lawns of upscale Rhode Island serves as a preview for the national conflict that will dominate American politics for the next two years.
This isn't a fight between left and right. It's a fight about how politics should be conducted. On the one hand are the true believers: the fundamentalists of both parties who believe that politics should be about party discipline, passion, purity, orthodoxy and clear choices. On the other side are the quasi-independents: the heterodox politicians who distrust ideological purity, who rebel against movement groupthink, who believe in bipartisanship both as a matter of principle and as a practical necessity.
In 2008, heterodox politicians like Mark Warner, Hillary Clinton and even Rudy Giuliani are going to have to face zealous assaults from within their own parties. But for the moment that war has come to Lincoln Chafee.
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