What "litmus test"?

I just read the latest edition of “Shadows on High,” a feature written by Progress Ohio’s Brian Rothenberg on the group’s website. I think he’s wandered into the woods on this one. (Actually, I think a lot of the problem is he’s trying to cover too many ideas).

http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/brianrothenberg/CXfD

Titled “The Tea Party Litmus: Coming to Haunt a Politician Near You,” he starts by making some valid points about how the across-the-board ideological purity demanded by the so-called tea-party movement is going to put some of the saner Republican politicians in a bind — although, by the end of his piece, he seems to be critiquing their own inconsistency and hypocrisy (what else is new?)

But Rothenberg’s piece compares apples and oranges and then throws in some kumquats. While trying to bar an anti-choice teenager from being honored on the floor of the State House was clumsy, there is simply not an equivalence between the lengthy check list of extremist positions the tea partiers are demanding from candidates and the desire of Democrats that a statewide candidate support basic rights that as outlined by the party platform.

This is just not a logical thing to say:

”For instance, what makes the litmus test of Jennifer Garrison’s positions on choice and DOMA different than, say, Ted Strickland or Richard Cordray’s views on guns or the death penalty?”

Well, virtually everything. For a start, Cordray’s and Strickland’s positions on those issues are mostly NOT being used as “litmus tests” for members of their own party. They’re barely discussed. And I guarantee that all those nice older Jewish couples who griped about Strickland’s pro-gun stances at a synagogue event I went to in 2005 voted for him. They were having their say, not putting down a “litmus test.” And what makes former secretary of state candidate Jennifer Garrison’s positions different is that she stood in radical opposition to virtually every member of the Democratic party — and on choice, most Republicans as well. This wasn’t a difference of approach or degree that could be contained within some mythical “big tent.” Her extremist positions were off the reservation entirely.

Not only wasn’t there a single “litmus test” (it turned out there was a host of issues on which she fundamentally disagreed with most Democrats), but the failure of both Garrison and the party to respond to concerns of Democrats who supported the party’s stated beliefs on these issues became a key part of the problem. We were essentially told our beliefs weren’t respected, even though they were the principles stated in the party platform.

By the way, Brian, it’s time to give up defending her — even the party finally admitted (tacitly) they’d blundered and pulled her off the ticket. It’s just a shame they weren’t listening for so long. Maryellen O’Shaughnessy seems like an outstanding candidate for secretary of state, and it would have been great if Democrats had been getting to know her during the last four or five months instead of building up resentment toward the party for dismissing their concerns about Garrison as some sort of unfair “litmus test.”