Max Baucus stunned the political world the other day by announcing he’s going to retire from the U.S. Senate after the 2014 election.

The Montana Democrat’s seat is now among the many others that Republicans think they have a chance of snatching away from the majority party.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/max-baucus-bitter-feuds-with-democrats-90533.html?hp=t2_3

Why the retirement? Why now? It appears his vote in the Senate the other day against a bill that would expand background checks for those who want to buy firearms has made him – so to speak – a target for those on his party’s left.

Thus, we’re now seeing the Democratic ideologues finding common ground with the ideologues in the Republican Party. Neither ideological extreme can much handle those who wish to work with those on the other side.

This isn’t good for representative democracy, ladies and gents.

I’ve been watching with some amusement as Republicans started singling out GOP officeholders in party primaries. The most famous result occurred this past year when GOP Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana lost his party primary to tea party nut case Richard Mourdock, who went on to lose the 2012 general election to a Democrat after he remarked stupidly that a pregnancy that results from a rape is “God’s will.”

I’m now watching the Democrats threatening to do the same thing to one of their own. Baucus is the third-most senior member of the Senate. He’s long been a key player in budget matters. Then he cast a vote against background checks, which an estimated 90 percent of all Americans favor. His vote seems to have enraged the base of his party.

Now he’s soon to be gone.

The Senate is about to lose another voice of reason.