Obamania might seem to define the Democrats of the moment. But there's a crosscurrent within the party, a different kind of Democrat coming on to the scene, that, depending on your perspective, will either lead the party to national dominance or drag them towards decline and betrayal.

Two months ago, an unknown politician named Travis Childers captured a seat in a deep-red Mississippi district that had been Republican territory for years. Childers won, in part, because the GOP brand had become, in Mississippi and elsewhere, "dog food," but then also because he adopted many traditionally right-wing positions, proudly announcing he's pro-life, pro-gun, and low-tax. Heath Schuler, the NFL bust and a class of '06 Democrat from North Carolina, has earned kudos from conservative icon Michelle Malkin for opposing amnesty in the summer of 2007 and introducing the SAVE Act this fall, which would step up border enforcement. A couple months ago, Bob Conley became South Carolina's unlikely Democratic nominee for Lindsey Graham's seat in the Senate. "Flat Top Bob," as he is know, is a cross between Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan--antiwar, pro-civil liberties, with a little economic nationalism thrown in.

The prototype of this new democrat is Virginia Senator Jim Webb, the novelist and former Regan official who became a Democrat over Iraq and defeated the then-front runner for the GOP nomination, George Allen (helped along by the "Macaca scandal.") At the time, the populist, culturally conservative Webb seemed like a colorful aberration; he now appears to be at the head of the revival of the conservative Democrat, the new "Dixiecrat" even (shorn of all segregationist hang-ups.)

The new Democrats' rise certainly hasn't been lost on progressives and the netroots. At Salon last week, constitutional lawyer and activist Glenn Greenwall has recently announced that he's launched a $350,000 campaign to kick out the right leaning "Blue Dogs" and prevent the ascension of any new ones--even if this costs the party control in Congress. Greenwald has some legitimate objections--as he points out, the Blue Dogs are generally bad on civil liberties, support a very Bushian conception of executive authority, and have been slow, to say the least, to challenge the president's war policy. But then it's wrong to think of the new Democrats as "moderates" or slippery pragmatists.

Greenwald is missing how politicians like Webb, Childers, and Conley are capturing a certain populist spirit that the GOP has owned for years--that rarely articulated, often abused, and above all vague sense that a party sticks up for God, country, and the average Joe. In 2004, Howard Dean talked about how he wanted to win over all those guys with Confederate Flag bumper stickers. Be careful what you wish for.