Some people may quarrel with me when I say that the defeat of Joe Lieberman marks the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party, perhaps arguing that the DP has been dead for a long while and it just doesn't know it yet.  I can't argue.

A year or so ago it seemed to me that the situation within the Democratic Party had gotten to such a point that there would soon be a third party formed.  I couldn't, and still can't, really, judge whether that would happen by the far left leaving the Democrats or vice-versa.  Well, now I think it will be the versa, and that it will happen before the next presidential election - specifically that Lieberman, the Clintons, and the Democratic Leadership Council will pull out of the Democratic Party.  And the little stone that started the landslide is the defeat of Lieberman.

It will be called the "Centrist Party" or the "Freedom Party", or maybe even the "Moderate Party".  And it will appeal to a large cross-section of independents, libertarians, minorities, and conservative Democrats,  as well as quite a few leftward-leaning Republicans.   Though the initial effect may be to split the Democratic vote and hand the Republicans some easy victories, I believe they will soon rival the Republicans in power and may even surpass them and start winning the Presidency again.

The effect of all this will be to pull the country more to the right, as the political argument will no longer be between anti-war socialists and pro-war free market capitalists.  That is an argument of the "what".  What are we, what should we be?  Should we have a command driven economy or a free market?  Should we have individual rights or group rights?  Is America worth defending?  Is there any moral superiority to Western enlightenment values over a feudal theocracy?  And are we at war with the Islamofacists or not?

After the third party is formed, most of those questions will have been answered.  What we will then be arguing about is the "how".   How will we go about ensuring a contined free market, individual rights, and American sovereignty?  How can we spread the values that make America what it is?  How will we win this bloody war with the Islamofacists?

It may be that, after a few upticks for the Republicans, their fortunes begin to get worse and worse as the new party becomes more and more accepted as the traditional counterweight.  But if America moves away from its flirtation with the nightmare of socialism, wouldn't that be a good thing?  And if the Republicans felt threatened, wouldn't they have a little incentive to clean house, stop playing the power brokers on Capitol Hill, and try a little reform?  Yes, probably too much to hope for, but one can dream.

The rump left of the Democratic Party - the socialists, communists, radical feminists, lawyers, and college professors - will probably hang around for awhile.  But they will be marginalized and will eventually have no effect on the politics of the United States.  Have you ever heard of the U.S. Green Party?  And that is the most ironic part of this whole picture - that at the moment of their greatest triumph, the leftisphere has critically hurt its chances to play a major part in the politics of America.

Thank goodness.