While we on the Left engage in our usual round of ‘why isn’t Obama more liberal?’, the Right always helps us demonstrate why that political pressure isn’t more effective.
Because the Republicans talk like this:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential presidential candidate in 2012, called Barack Obama on Thursday “the most radical president in American history” who oversees a “secular, socialist machine.”
As a politician, why be so exclusively progressive in politics, when conservatives abandon the battlefield of sanity completely and leave the entire realm of rationality for you alone to occupy?
And with rare exception this has been the Republican playbook for every President since Wilson.
Just look at these likely Gingrich statements over the years:
1980:
“Jackie, Jimmy Carter is the most radical president in American history who oversees a “secular, socialist machine”. And by the way, I’ve met someone else and I want a divorce. Good luck with your cancer.”
2000:
“Marianne, Bill Clinton is the most radical president in American history who oversees a “secular, socialist machine”, and he has no moral scruples. And by the way, I’ve met someone else, who’s better in bed than you, and I want a divorce.”
2010:
Uh, good luck Callista.
(pic from here)
