The Dennis Moore lesson

A successful Kansas Democrat has decided not to seek re-election, opening a seat in a "purple" District that is attracting several Republican hopefuls:

All [of the potential GOP candidates] told The Kansas City Star that they believed Moore . . . was in trouble because of his support for many of President Barack Obama’s initiatives, including the stimulus package and health care reform.
"He's very vulnerable," O'Hara said. "He's become a voting machine for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

What is happening to Moore in KS3 now is part of a nationwide phenomenon that will become more apparent going into the 2010 mid-terms.

Middle-class voters perceive that the ascent of Obama to the White House has resulted in a political imbalance that in turn produced bad economic policies. Even many of those who voted for "Hope and Change" now want to elect Republicans to Congress to restore balance in Washington. In suburban and rural districts where Bush won in 2004 but Democrats currently hold congressional seats, the anti-Bush backlash that dominated in 2006 and 2008 has ended.

The combination of unprecedented deficit spending and high unemployment constitutes a toxic burden to Democrats going into 2010. The stimulus-and-bailout agenda was never popular among middle-class voters. It is not merely the economic failure of that agenda, but the way it contradicts basic bourgeois beliefs about financial prudence, which make it such a political liability. Any Democrat in a middle-class district who voted for that agenda can expect to be pounded relentlessly by attack ads.

And expect to see a lot of Not-A-Politician candidates emerge as the GOP challengers in these districts. This isn't just about "populism," it's about Republicans understanding the current political terrain.

Endangered Democratic incumbents would like nothing better than to face a Republican opponent who is already a state senator or a long-serving county commissioner -- someone with a political record that can be used in opposition research. Therefore, GOP activists will be seeking out squeaky-clean Solid Citizen types, "outsiders" who bring no political baggage into the campaign -- school teachers, small business owners, housewives, etc.

The media will try to portray this as a "peasants with pitchforks" phenomenon, but it's really just smart politics.

'How Should Congress Respond?'

Salvation through legislation is the liberal gospel, and Ezra Klein is in the pulpit:

[The murder of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller] is the final, decisive act in "an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services." That campaign stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence, and, finally, murder. . . .
This was, in other words, a political act. Tiller was murdered so that those in his line of work would be intimidated. In conversations with folks yesterday, I heard well-meaning variants on the idea that it would be unseemly to push legislation in the emotional aftermath of Tiller's execution. I disagree.
[I]n my view, [it would be] a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively prove [the murderer's] action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive.

Murder is already against the law, but liberals can't save the world if they let mere facts get in their way.

Oh, God, not this: Tiller assassinatedMORE UPDATES:: Suspect arrested

6:10 p.m. EDT:

• LATEST NEWS UPDATES HERE
• MORE COMMENTARY HERE

PREVIOUSLY (4:35 p.m.EDT): While we await the police press conference, pro-life blogger Becky Banks Brindle has aggregated reaction from pro-life activists, including condemnation of the assassination by National Right to Life.

4:45 p.m.: Steve Marshall of USA Today is trying to outblog me on this story. Good luck with that, Steve. Beers to the winner, eh?

Reaction from Rude News, and linked at Comments From Left Field. Someone else has linked, proving again the truth of Rule 4 that linky-hate is the same as linky-love.

Expect further updates . . .

PREVIOUSLY: 3:45 p.m.: KMBC-TV reports:

A man sought in connection with the shooting was taken into custody south of the Kansas City area on Sunday afternoon. . . .
Police were not immediately identifying the name of the man arrested.
Attorney Dan Monnat said Tiller, 67, was shot at about 10 a.m. as he served as an usher during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church. Monnat said Tiller's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time of the shooting.

4:05 p.m.: Details about the suspects arrest are still very sketchy. The Wichita Eagle is on the story:

The suspect in this morning's fatal shooting of George Tiller is in custody, according to emergency dispatchers.
Authorities have yet to release more information about the arrest. Wichita police have scheduled a 4 p.m. news conference to discuss the case . .

Patterico is also blogging, as is Gateway Pundit. Meanwhile, some self-proclaimed "Putz" counterfactually accuses me of "blaming the victim."

Sigh. I've laid aside an essay I had worked on for four hours, so that I could try to get the updated news here, and put it in historical perspective. This insulting response is the thanks I get. So to the Putz, I say, in the famous words of Rahm Emanuel . . .

UPDATE 4:20 p.m.: Sweet mother of pearl! I'm not going to link Andrew Sullivan on this one, but Professor Donald Douglas does. Go read that and come back, because big news is breaking, and I'm holy unshirted hell on deadline when news is breaking.

PREVIOUSLY (2:36 p.m. EDT): While I was working on a long Hayekian essay today, the New York Times reported this awful news:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning inside the lobby of his Wichita church.
Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.
Police said they are looking for white male who was driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB . . .

Via Memeorandum, which links reaction by Professor Donald Douglas, among many others. Prayers for the law enforcement officers who seek the killer, and prayers for the families and friends of both Tiller and his assassin.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same . . ."
-- Romans 13:1-3 (KJV)

Sometimes, when the stubborn wickedness of a people offends God, the Almighty witholds His divine protection, permitting those sinners to have their own way, following the road to destruction so that they are subjected to evil rulers and unjust laws. Never, however, does the wise and faithful Christian resort to the kind of lawlessness practiced with such cruelty today in Kansas.

And so much for finishing my Hayekian essay, I suppose.

UPDATE: One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin.

From Brutus and the other republican Senators who slew Julius Caesar to Charlotte Corday, from John Wilkes Booth to Gavrilo Princip, and so onto Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, assassination seems inevitably to work against the purposes of its practicioners.

Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat's death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth's pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.

UPDATE II: Checking the major conservative blogs as of 3 p.m. EDT, Professor Glenn Reynolds seems not to have noticed this story yet. Nothing as yet from Michelle Malkin, either. Gateway Pundit is on it. Will check others. If anyone else is aggregating, please be sure to link here.

UPDATE III: More news reports from AP/Fox News.

Expect further updates . . .