Sold Down the River on the Liberal Plantation

Megan considers an academic paper on partisanship and the anti-war movement.  She observes:

Have you noticed all the huge antiwar demonstrations in the last twelve months?  Yeah, me neither.  It turns out that a lot of the energy for the movement seems to have been provided by Democrats who are a lot less worried about wars conducted by Democratic presidents.  Or at least who believe that advancing the Democratic agenda is much more important than trying to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, this is not limited to the anti-war movement.  I can think of three other examples.

• Environmentalists once understood – correctly – that greater human populations put greater stress on the environment and that immigration into the U.S. put greater stress on American environmental goods specifically and the global environment generally.  Yet the environmental movement has completely abandoned its opposition to immigration, sometimes in exchange for cold cash, but more often to assure its organizations a seat at the table of the grand Left-wing Democrat coalition.
• The leadership of the labor movement, from Samuel Gompers to Cesar Chavez, once understood – correctly – that as the supply of cheap immigrant labor went up, the ability of labor unions to command higher wages for their members went down.  Yet our present crop of union organizations, most conspicuously the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), agitates for more immigration on the grounds that more low-wage workers = more low-wage dues-paying union members, even if the union fails at increasing wages.  And, yeah, it also assures them of a seat at the table of the grand Left-wing Democrat coalition.
• The feminist movement advertises itself as the protectors of women’s interests.  Yet in the 1990’s in two high-profile cases involving the mistreatment of women – Bill Clinton’s alleged rape of Juanita Broderick and O.J. Simpson’s murder of Nicole Brown – the leadership of feminist organizations suddenly went mute:  in the first instance, to protect a politically valuable ally; and in the second, to avoid offending blacks.  Again, the titular objectives took a back seat to assuring a seat at the table of the grand Left-wing Democrat coalition.

Megan quotes someone claiming that the Tea Party faces similar pressures, yet I can’t think of any examples of Right wing partisanship this egregious.