I wrote a piece for the New Republic soon afterward about the Obamacon phenomenon—prominent conservatives and Republicans who were openly supporting Obama.
Among the Obamacons were Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff; Charles Fried, Reagan’s solicitor general; Ken Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for Reagan; Jeffrey Hart, longtime senior editor of National Review; Colin Powell, Reagan’s national security adviser and secretary of state for George W. Bush; and Scott McClellan, Bush’s press secretary. There were many others as well.
In my opinion, Obama has governed as a moderate conservative—essentially as what used to be called a liberal Republican before all such people disappeared from the GOP. He has been conservative to exactly the same degree that Richard Nixon basically governed as a moderate liberal, something no conservative would deny today. (Ultra-leftist Noam Chomsky recently called Nixon “the last liberal president.”)
Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett: Face it, Obama is a conservative
---Just look at the president's record, Bartlett says. This is no progressive
President Barack Obama “has governed as a moderate conservative,” former Reagan administration domestic policy aide Bruce Bartlett writes in a new essay for the eclectic American Conservative magazine.
Bartlett, an economic policy expert who left the Republican Party amid disgust with President George W. Bush’s fiscal policies and backed Obama in 2008, contends that a look at Obama’s track record reveals a president who’s basically a liberal Republican of yore. From the beginning of his administration, Bartlett argues, Obama has charted a center-right course on both foreign and domestic policy issues.
www.salon.com/2014/10/21/reagan_adviser_...a_is_a_conservative/
So, temporarily putting aside our own opinions on whether he is or isn't, read the articles and please tell me why you agree or disagree. Specifically.
We'll hold this line until Hell freezes over --Then we'll hold it on ice skates.-Anonymous picket sign
Couldn’t, wouldn’t, mustn’t, shouldn’t – these are the laments of the spineless. –Bette Davis
Feminist. We Just Call Out Bulls**t Where We See It.
Agree. He is a conservative in a lot of ways. Actually more conservative than Nixon with price controls. But he is also very liberal in ways. His military draw down is something only Rand Paul would consider.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
I would agree that there is much similarity between Nixon and Obama. Both were interested in imperial presidency, both were interested in expansion of federal power at the expense of individual liberty. That political outlook has little to do with party affiliation. The same could be said for both Bush presidents by the way.
As to the tired meme of the individual mandate being a "Republican" idea, that has been addressed quite often in the past. When one concedes that there will, indeed, be some form of collective health insurance imposed upon the population and the society, the only question left is how to limit the amount of damage it will ultimately do. Was "universal" healthcare in Massachusetts Romney's idea? Not at all. It wasn't something he campaigned on promising to bring to the citizens of MA if elected, was it. Nope. Romney found himself in a position of having the MA legislature imposing it on the citizens of MA one way or another and how best to limit the damage it would ultimately cause. The question of if it should exist wasn't on the table at that point, only the form in which it would exist. When the PPACA was being ramrodded through Congress in 2010 there still existed the distinct and real possibility that such a disastrous course could yet be averted, which was why no Republican signed onto it and no Republican voted in favor of it.
PrintSmith wrote: As to the tired meme of the individual mandate being a "Republican" idea, that has been addressed quite often in the past.
There is no individual mandate to buy insurance. If there was, there was no need to cancel everyone's INDIVIDUAL "insurance" that they already had.
The mandate is to purchase a gov't defined pre-paid one-size fits nobody, inefficient health "care" plan with a shared responsibility payment (tax) arbitrarily defined by bureaucrats and politicians.
If you want to be, press one. If you want not to be, press 2
Republicans are red, democrats are blue, neither of them, gives a flip about you.
