In his August 10 nationally syndicated column, Fox News host Cal Thomas claimed that Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont's August 8 victory over Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary “completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing.” Thomas explained that they are called the “Taliban Democrats because they are willing to 'kill' one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe.”

Exit polling from Connecticut indicated that “intense objections” to the Iraq war, and “a view of Senator Lieberman as 'too close' to President Bush account[ed] for Mr. Lamont's victory.” As Media Matters for America has noted, polling indicates that significant majorities of Democrats, as well as the rest of the American public also disapprove of the Iraq war and of Bush -- belying Thomas's claim that Lamont supporters are on the “kook fringe.”

Nevertheless, Thomas bemoaned the “political 'fatwah' ” the “Taliban Democrats” have issued and declared that the Democrats “have all but guaranteed a Republican presidential victory in 2008 and GOP losses, if any, might not be as bad as predicted this November.”

From Thomas' August 10 column:

The narrow primary defeat of veteran senator Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary is more than a loss for one man. It is a loss for his party and for the country. It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing.

They used to be “San Francisco Democrats,” a phrase coined by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick to describe the party's 1984 convention. But they have now morphed into Taliban Democrats because they are willing to “kill” one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe.

[...]

Though Lieberman says he will run as an independent, the damage has been done. It will be difficult for any Democrat to seek consensus with any Republican without being targeted as an infidel worthy of electoral death. Our already-poisoned political dialogue has not only been made more toxic, but contagious. Taliban Democrats have effectively issued a political “fatwah” that warns all Democrats not to deviate from their narrow line, or else face the end of their careers through a political jihad. Perhaps the few remaining rational Democrats should put on their burkas now and submit to the will of the party mullahs.

[...]

Lieberman's loss reduces the size of the Democrats' tent to that of a pup tent. The message it sends is that only those who conform to the left-wing fundamentalist worldview will be allowed in. Is that a message Democrats want to take into future campaigns? Do they wish to pervert John F. Kennedy's vision and instead say that the United States will pay no price, bear no burden and go nowhere in the defense of liberty?

If that is the message the Taliban Democrats want to send to the nation, they have all but guaranteed a Republican presidential victory in 2008 and GOP losses, if any, might not be as bad as predicted this November. Karl Rove could not have devised a more brilliant plan. But Joe Lieberman deserves better.