By Peter Heck

Look no further than the explosion of sanctimonious outrage after Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Lujan announced the DCCC would fund pro-life Democrats running for office in 2018.

Even though this is a policy consistent with the public statements of Democrat House Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, and de-facto Democrat Party Leader Bernie Sanders, the revolt was instantaneous.

Mother Jones squealed, “People are REALLY Mad at the DCCC.”

NARAL president Ilyse Hogue has blustered about, “being thrown under the bus.”

Former (and some desire future) DNC chief Howard Dean pouted, “I’m afraid I’ll be with holding support for the DCCC if this is true.”

Habitually unhinged liberal columnist Jill Filipovic sarcastically whined, “What better strategy than to betray their base and reaffirm that women’s basic rights are negotiable and disposable.”

And the always hyperbolic journalist Lauren Duca snarled, “This is a betrayal of every woman who has ever supported the Democratic Party.”

In case there was ever any question about priorities, when it comes to the right to kill children, these people are beyond serious. It’s quite literally a sacrament in the religion of leftism. For as much as progressives pretend to be enamored with diversity, and with as much as they love to mock Christians for their convictions and conscience, the left is just as committed to a rigid, dogmatic acceptance of the morality of abortion as any fundamentalist preacher they mock.

Now, politically, Lujan’s announcement makes sense. The Republican Party is flailing and the party out of power always has good odds to gain seats, if not surge to majority status in midterm elections. Selecting and supporting candidates in conservative districts who aren’t sworn members in the death cult of abortion is simply smart politics.

But as I wrote about recently, the Democrat Party is far more committed to ideological purity than the Republican Party. It’s why no one has to guess how the four Democrats on the Supreme Court will vote on controversial cases. It’s why they don’t struggle to cram through massive legislation like Obamacare without a single crossover vote. It’s why they don’t lose a single defector on votes to repeal the giant healthcare disaster they created.

But this is the trade-off. You can demand ideological purity at the risk of being a perpetual minority. Lujan wants 218 in the House and 51 in the Senate. It’s clear a number of his fellow Democrats would prefer falling short of those numbers so long as they keep voluntary child killing for convenience a defining and non-negotiable characteristic of Democrat Party membership. Because, priorities.

Tell me again, who are the extremists?