Dems Invite Lifers to the Party

When the GOP stumbled on its biggest priority of the year, most people thought they'd handed the Left a huge political opportunity. Unfortunately for Democrats, they're too busy fighting over abortion to seize it. While the Republicans walk a rocky road after the health care collapse, it's not exactly a picnic at the DNC, where a civil war is brewing over the party's decision to back 2018 pro-lifers.

Ben Ray Lujan, who has the unenviable job of trying to win back the House from the GOP, knows that picking up 24 seats means a major reboot on the party's social agenda. November should have been proof enough, but, like most liberals, Lujan didn't really get the message until pro-life Democrat Heath Mello lost a mayoral race in Nebraska -- the casualty of a fierce inner-party squabble over abortion. Not anxious to repeat that mistake, Lujan's Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) may as well have detonated a bomb when he announced, "There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates... As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district -- that can win in these districts across America."

Feminists, abortion groups, and celebrities blew a gasket, demanding that Lujan walk back the diversity their party was supposedly built on. An outraged Rosie O'Donnell tried to start a grassroots rebellion on Twitter, calling on women to leave the Democratic Party. "Fight the men who want to take away women's rights IN OUR OWN PARTY? [Expletive] them for even considering it. Seriously." Lujan, meanwhile, insisted that toning down the extremism that cost Hillary Clinton the White House was the only path to victory. "To pick up 24 [seats] and to get to 218, that is the job. We'll need a broad coalition to get that done. We are going to need all of that, we have to be a big family in order to win the House back."

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