The emerging meme used to target moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats for their dissent from liberal orthodoxy on health care reform is that they are beholden to the health insurance industry. One does not need to look far through the left-leaning blogosphere to see these marching orders being carried out. (No notice is taken, of course, of the level of campaign contributions that more liberal Democrats accept from government employee unions that will be the primary beneficiaries of the massive increases in government jobs that would accompany the establishment of a vast new bureaucracy to manage a government-controlled health care system.)

Blue Dogs point out that they are merely attempting to reign in the excesses of a debate controlled by partisan extremists:

Stenholm also argued that conservative Democrats are helping to save health-care reform from the extremes. “They have played a tremendously important role in keeping the process from getting out of control,” he said. “This compromise is a perfect example of what being a Blue Dog is all about.”

Given the trillion-dollar price tag and the attempts that have already been made by purists to smuggle in mandates that would effectively ban private insurance and make the “public option” mandatory, it is hardly out-of-line for “Blue Dogs” and other moderates to ride herd on the process and insist on greater openness, more debate, and more critical reevaluation of alternatives. But, of course, purists want none of that stuff:

“The Blue Dogs are carrying water for the industry instead of their constituents,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now, a liberal pro-reform group. “In effect, the Blue Dogs and the Republicans are taking positions that are closer all the time and further away from what most Americans want.”

In modern Democratic Party circles, being lumped in with Republicans is somewhere in the same region as being lumped in with Satan, Hitler, and the Hamburgler, all at the same time. And self-righteous purist Democrats have started to openly threaten dissenting Democrats with loss of committee chairs and even intra-party primary challenges. The knives are out and the purge is pending, in spite of Democrats’ constant claim to be the tolerant political party in contrast to the supposedly unique intransigence of social conservatives over Republicans.

In truth, “Blue Dogs” are carrying out what moderates overwhelmingly voted for when they turned away from Republicans in 2006 and 2008 and embraced Democrats’ promises to govern more responsibly and with less ideological baggage. Like every other time when one party claims overwhelming dominance in Washington, D.C., the primary threat to moderation and pragmatism comes from ideological purists within the dominant party, not from the already-discredited bomb-throwers in the opposition. There are more than a few (putatively) moderate political analysts who frankly need to wake up and get their eye back on the ball. A couple that have already done so include TMV’s Pete Abel and Jazz Shaw.

While concerned about the cost and the potential for abuse of government power, I suspect that most moderates are quite willing to concede a central liberal argument on health care — that leaving nearly 50 million people uninsured is both manifestly unjust as a policy choice and probably more costly to the overall health care system in the long term. So, the accusation from “public option” purists that concerns about cost and abuse of power are merely tricks to obstruct all reform is frankly dishonest. Attempts to bully the moderate skeptics into compliance tend to backfire insofar as they turn potential partners into political enemies for no gain — its not like the purists are going to be able to succeed in hiding the cost and coercion buried in their proposals now that the “Blue Dogs” and other moderates have been aroused to action. And trying to discredit them by lumping them in with Republicans merely forces them into the arms of those who actually are opposed to real health care reform.

Bottom line: Purists that are bashing the Blue Dogs are destroying their own best prospects for reform.