The Blog

What Emanuel Means

2:48 PM, Nov 6, 2008 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI
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As Paul Mirengoff points out, Obama's selection of Illinois Democrat Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff is yet another sign that the president-elect intends to govern from the center of the center-left: "I suspect ... that it is Democratic heads Emanuel will be knocking. Republican heads don't count for much on Capitol Hill these days, and the Obama administration won't be in much of a position to knock them, in any case."

Democratic heads like the liberal barons who rule Capitol Hill. They are the subject of today's lead editorial in the Journal:

All of these feudal lords -- and many others -- also come with their own private armies: the interest groups that compose the money and manpower of today's Democratic Party. The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and others on the anti-antiterror left want Mr. Obama to limit the surveillance and other tools that have prevented another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense will insist on onerous caps -- that is, taxes -- on coal and other carbon energy. Those won't help Mr. Obama carry Ohio and Indiana again in four years.

Nor North Carolina or Virginia. Obama will want to strengthen his gains in these new blue states, while deepening his support in places like Missouri, Georgia, and Montana.

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