(March 18)  The national Democratic Party today is so openly hostile to political semi-centrists that it would rather lose elections than abandon its far-left ideology.

That’s the word not from a Republican public relations guru, but from a rising-star Democratic congresswoman. Or, rather, a congresswoman who was a rising star … but instead is retiring from Congress because she finds her party’s extreme liberalism untenable.

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The story comes from veteran Politico reporter Rachael Bade, who interviewed Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida. Murphy, a Vietnamese refugee and former specialist at the Department of Defense, is stepping down from Congress at the youthful age of 43 after just three two-year terms. She told Bade that Democratic congressional leadership repeatedly tries to “beat moderates into submission” and “turn … anger and disappointment against their own members.”

Despite a perch on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and a position as co-chair of the Democrats’ center-leaning Blue Dog Coalition, Murphy said she has had enough of the bullying from so-called “progressives.” Even though only somewhat near the center can hold a Florida “swing district” for Democrats against a Republican takeover, she told Bade (paraphrasing her) that “her party right now doesn’t want a member like her. Centrist Democrats … are now greatly out of fashion,” even when the realistic alternative is a Republican.

And it’s not even as if Murphy is more of a centrist than she is an old-fashioned liberal (rather than an even more extreme hard-leftist). As of November 2021, Murphy had voted in line with President Joe Biden’s position on every single issue that actually reached the House floor. She is strongly for a number of gun-control measures, has a 100% pro-abortion voting record, co-sponsored a quite liberal “police reform” bill, and has a lifetime rating of less than 7% from the American Conservative Union. [Yet even for her, national Democrats are too far leftist. To read the rest of the column about why, please follow this link.]

 

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