What is now happening to the Republican party should be taken as a cautionary note to those who would have the Democratic party develop a single position on Iraq or anything else. Having a unified party position and strict message discipline is fine when all is going well but it can come back to bite you with a vengeance when that position starts looking like a loser.
The Republicans thought they had us when they all starting parroting "stay the course" and claiming we were the party of "cut and run". Now that their position looks like a loser they are ALL stuck with it and are sinking like stones because of it.
The point is, that could NEVER happen to us Dems because we are too diverse to ever get as robotic as the Repubs do. What is forgotten is that our lack of message discipline is itself a strength - Nobody will ever catch us all wrong footed at the same time on the same issue because we are always furiously debating any and everything all the time.
The media don:t get this and I think the reason is that they are lazy. The Repubs make their job easier because all they have to do is go to the RNC and get the one page talking point summary and they are done with their research. When the going is good, then that looks like a winning way to organize your party but at the moment it looks like the best way to tank your approval ratings ever devised.
When it comes time for the media to research the Dems they are irritated because there is no one source to easily crib from. You would actually have to LOOK at all the Dem's statements to realize that even though they are all different, they are all similar on many issues. To take an example from the most important issue facing us today, there is no single unified Dem position on Iraq but in fact if you did an hour or two of research you would realize that ALL of them (or at least 95%) could easily agree with the following: do not stay indefinitely; indeed, start making plans to leave. Sure, some want to pull out today, some next month, some next year but almost all want out. THAT is as unified as we get and it comes with the added benefit that after having debated the position and come to individual answers our guys can actually EXPLAIN and DEFEND what they believe instead of running the soundbite tape over and over and over.
So lets not hear any more calls for "message discipline". Our lack of it is our strength. Their adherence to it is their undoing in this election.