ANALYSIS/OPINION:

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Despite what the hysterical media will tell you, those distant blasts you heard last week rolling from New York City to Richmond were not cannon fire from the ongoing civil war within the Republican Party. They were the first shots fired in the civil war that is about to break wide open within the Democratic Party.

The hyperventilating media have gone from simply jaundiced sideline observers to outright cheerleaders, breathlessly fanning the flames of discord within the GOP at every turn. Who knew The New York Times cares so much about Republican politicians from Texas and Utah? Of course, they don’t. Unless those conservative Texans and Utahans are in a knife fight with establishment Republicans in Washington.

Last Tuesday’s Democratic routs in Virginia and in New York City, the media squealed with delight, was final proof that the Republican Party is finished. Not only in sophisticated places like New York City, but also important battleground states like Virginia.

Now it is certainly true that Republicans have suffered some humiliating defeats of late. Chief among them has been their inability in three elections to win the argument against Obamacare. Now that Americans have met Obamacare, we realize just how pathetic Republicans had to have been to lose that fight.

All of that pain caused in recent years by the tea party and the conservative purists throwing overboard so many of the whorish politicians in their own midst who came to Washington only to be corrupted will pay off down the road. The growing new voices in the Republican Party sound more and more reasonable and principled by the day, especially with the hot disaster that has become of centralized socialist medicine.

Some of those battles are still yet to come, but at least the party is on the road to recovery.

Not so the Democrats. Flush with victories of their opponents’ making in recent years, they have gotten a little fat and lazy, and now they’re overreaching.

Terry McAuliffe was cruising to a double-digit win in Virginia — only to have Obamacare raise its ugly head and nearly snatch victory away at the last minute.

In New York City, voters elected an unreconstructed old-school liberal from the days of Austin Powers. New Yorkers are not nearly the doctrinaire liberals that many people tend to believe. They like politicians who make their sprawling, unruly city work. Just as soon as the crime, trash piles and taxes start rising, they will be ready to throw Bill DiBlasio out.

Democrats in the Senate realize the trouble they are in, which is why they marched down to the White House last week to blast President Obama over the political stink bomb of a health care law that he has dumped into their laps just in time for their 2014 re-election campaigns.

Best of all, the Clintons realize this, too. Tuesday’s explosive interview where former President Clinton called on Mr. Obama to “honor” his “commitment” and allow people to keep their health insurance plans if they like them was not only another blast in the Democratic civil war, it was the opening salvo by the Clinton campaign to throw Mr. Obama under the bus.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at [email protected], and on Twitter at @charleshurt.

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