Cracks in Dem party disicipline

Donald Lambro:

Sen. Hillary Clinton couldn't have picked a better time this week to call for a cease-fire in the Democratic Party's ideological war with itself.
While she was delivering her plea for a truce at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council's annual summer convention in Columbus, Ohio, the AFL-CIO, one of her party's richest and most powerful forces, was coming apart at the seams as two of its biggest unions defected, possibly joined by two or three more. Some have called for a more bipartisan relationship with Republicans and the Bush White House.
At the same time, Democrats in Congress were becoming increasingly divided over a long list of policy issues, from the anti-terrorist Patriot Act to the energy bill, from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr. to the war in Iraq. It doesn't make the nightly news, but anywhere from 25 percent to 70 percent of the House Democratic caucus have voted for major GOP bills over the past six months (nearly one-fourth last week for the Patriot Act's reauthorization).
Fissures were evident elsewhere among the party's grass-roots this week. Mr. Bush held another meeting with black church, business and civic leaders, who praised his outreach efforts, increased aid to Africa and the racial diversity of his administration. Republican Chairman Ken Mehlman was peddling the GOP's ownership agenda to 3,500 voters at Houston's African Methodist Episcopal Church convention in Houston.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton, who plans to run for president in 2008 with the guidance of the smartest campaign strategist on the planet, her husband Bill Clinton, continued to pursue her extreme makeover, repositioning herself as a party centrist -- at least rhetorically.

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