All this anti-"Operation Hilarity" has me... a bit concerned. I should start by saying that, intellectually, I agree with the "it's best not to tamper" folks. However, this kind of thinking is exactly why the left has been losing ground for so many decades. It is a sickness born out of the desire for good intentions.
One of the things I've noticed about liberal-minded people in general: we (they) have this NEED to "make peace" with the very people who would just as soon see us destroyed. This isn't always a bad thing necessarily. It's where a lot of the courage for things like opposing war in the face of unrelenting propaganda come from.
But it's also very much present in politics. We see it again and again and again played out in the White House, the Senate and the House. Democrats just love the idea of a "grand bargain" and all that. They keep talking to the Republicans, even though to so many of us, it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to keep their word.
With regards to the political institutions, people tend to blame it on "Washington culture". That's not entirely wrong, but it also overlooks that aforementioned desire by people on the left to make peace. For all the bitching about "capitulation" by so many people on this site and others like it, I sometimes think to myself, "Yeah, but I bet if you were a Democratic Senate or House member, you'd do the same damn thing."
It's just some deep-seeded desire to get people who hate us to like us.
The thing is... conservatives DO hate us. They approach politics like it's war. We are the enemy to them, and we must be destroyed at all costs.
Let me say it again in case it's not clear:
THEY HATE US.
On a macro level, these people wouldn't give a shit if we were hauled off, tortured and thrown into gas chambers.
They hate everything about us, and will do whatever it takes to stop us from trying to make this country a better place to live. That includes "tampering" with our primary elections. They've friggin' done it before and you can bet your ass that they'll be doing it again in 2016 if they get the chance.
They are at war with us. They don't really know why any more, but they damn sure know they're at war with "liberals" or "democrats"... "commies". "f*ggts". "[insert derogatory racial slur here]". "feminists". "Secularists". Their list goes on and on.
Again, I don't LIKE this idea on an intellectual or gut level, but god damnit... it's high time progressives woke the fuck up and realized that if they're at war with us, than it means we're at war with them.
These fuckers should have been destroyed after the 2008 election, after their 15 years of truly backwards economic policies and their war on everything that doesn't agree with them finally should have sent them to the trash heap of history. Their economic policies have devastated this country at LEAST 4 times in just over a century... yet somehow, they keep coming back. Somehow, their ideology is never discredited enough to the point where it's considered as fucked up as eugenics or slavery... even though it easily could be.
Instead, we let them get a second wind. It might seem like they're doing a great job of fucking themselves in the ass again for the 2012 elections (they just can't help but over reach), but the reality is... as long as we are unwilling to destroy them, they'll just keep coming back again and again. More collectively hate filled and angry than the last time.
And when they do, they will drag this country further and further to the right. Why? Because far, far too many Democrats and liberals can't fucking resist trying to make peace and find common ground with them.
If destroying them means giving a putrid piece of shit like Rick Santorum a platform to spew his bile invective, than so be it. Just as long as we make sure to pelt him with broken beer bottles and rocks while he's on that platform.
And if destroying them means fucking with their clown show primaries, I'm all for that too. After all, how am I going to thrown broken bottles at a scum bucket like Rick Santorum if we don't let him even stand on the platform?
When you're at war, you engage in propaganda and psy-ops. We don't do that on the left because we don't think of ourselves as at war with conservatives who want to destroy us. We send out a damned talking points memo and call it a day.
Team Blue needs to wake up real fast.
2012 is shaping up to be a second chance to at LEAST wipe out conservative economic policy and a good portion of their social policies. Again, they'll probably shoot themselves in the chest for the 2012 elections, just as they did in the 2008 elections. But like all zombies, they'll just shrug it off, get back up and chase us a little further to the right again. There's only one way to stop a zombie, gang.
We have a second chance to truly send modern conservativism to hell where it belongs. But only if we're willing to collectively get down there in the mud and engage with conservatives using the same war-like tactics they've been using against us for so long.