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The Center-Right Nation Exits Stage Left
washingtonpost.com ^ | November 16, 2008 | Tod Lindberg

Posted on 11/16/2008 4:07:06 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY

Here's the main thought Republicans are consoling themselves with these days: Notwithstanding President-elect Barack Obama, a nearly filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate and the largest Democratic majority in the House of Representatives since 1993, the United States is still a center-right country. Sure, voters may be angry with Republicans now, but eventually, as the Bush years recede and the GOP modernizes its brand, a basically right-tilting electorate will come back home. Or, in the words of the animated rock band the Gorillaz, "I'm useless, but not for long/The future is comin' on."

Thus Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, in Outlook last week: The United States "is indeed, as conservatives have been insisting in recent days, a center-right country." On election night, former Bush guru Karl Rove opined on Fox News, "Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country, and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it." And it's not just conservative pundits and operatives singing this song. Take Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, who wrote an Oct. 27 cover essay entitled "America the Conservative," which argued that Obama will have to "govern a center-right nation" that "is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal."

The only problem: It isn't true. Or at least, not anymore. If you'd asked me a year ago whether the United States is really a center-right nation, I would have said yes -- after pausing for a second to contemplate the GOP's big congressional losses in 2006.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 111th; 2008; bho2008; mccain; todlindberg
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1 posted on 11/16/2008 4:07:07 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
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To: Free ThinkerNY
Liberals may be right that Americans want the country to be like Europe. But they should hold off premature celebration of a realignment election. Just four years ago, conservatives were sure the Left was finished for good and would never stage a comeback. Four years is a long time and Obama may turn out to be no Roosevelt.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

2 posted on 11/16/2008 4:11:37 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

they’ll be center right once Obama turns this country into Argentina.


3 posted on 11/16/2008 4:12:04 PM PST by ari-freedom (So this is how Liberty dies... with thunderous applause)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

The pendulem will not swing back due to immigratiaon.thank you George W. Bush for not enforceing immigration law.


4 posted on 11/16/2008 4:12:09 PM PST by bilhosty
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Comment #5 Removed by Moderator

To: Free ThinkerNY
Perhaps, in their zeal to claim victory, the Left might want to consider what they elected?

Taxcuts for 95% of Americans? End our dependence on Mid East Oil in 10 years? Barack RAN as a centrists, not as a rabid liberal. Now, having lied their way into power, the Left faces the reality of who do they betray? Their lunatic fringe base or the 10s of millions of Centrists they fooled into voting for them?

Check out the Battle Ground poll? Year after year, 60% of Americans describe themselves as “somewhat or very” Conservative. That number did not change in 2006, 2007 or 2008.

Obama has a chance if he moves strongly to the middle as President. In other words, governs on what he ran on, not on what all the fashionable Radicals know he, and they really believe.

If he governs based on all the usual Leftist dogmas, he will destroy his Presidency and his party. Same way Jimmy Carter in virtually the exact same political situation after the 1976 elections.

6 posted on 11/16/2008 4:15:59 PM PST by MNJohnnie (Ok, lied your way into power Democrats, now who you going to blame?.)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

A lot of uninformed people will soon get a lesson in fundamental economics. When people realize the engine of America’s economic growth is free market capitalism, they may quickly turn on the failed policies of socialists under Obama.


7 posted on 11/16/2008 4:16:23 PM PST by NoControllingLegalAuthority ((Barack Obama...stuck on stupid and idle as the world races by him like a bullet train...)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

What a pantload! He starts out by using Chris Shays as an examplar of the “center-right”?

Then he goes on to say: “The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.”

And concludes: “This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left”

No.

It is a portrait of a Republican party that has carried the banner of conservatism, but has failed to live by it’s principles. The electorate hasn’t changed, the GOP has.


8 posted on 11/16/2008 4:16:53 PM PST by bigbob
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To: MNJohnnie

I think a lot of people were tired of paying for the war and disgusted by mccain for how he handled the bailout. That doesn’t mean that they want a New New Deal. They are more libertarian than liberal.


9 posted on 11/16/2008 4:24:29 PM PST by ari-freedom (So this is how Liberty dies... with thunderous applause)
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To: NoControllingLegalAuthority

YEP...that “lesson in fundamental economics” is a long time coming....hopefully, SOME PEOPLE will PAY ATTENTION.


10 posted on 11/16/2008 4:28:53 PM PST by goodnesswins (CONSERVATIVES....saving America's A** whether you like it or not!)
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To: Free ThinkerNY
BS

How can they make such a brazen assumption without knowing who voted for Obammie the Commie and why?

20% of conservatives voted for him. I suspect it was because they are sick of the Rockefeller Republicans dictating who our representatives will be.

I still say that the result of the 08 pres election and the 06 midterms were the same voice of the “angry white male” who voted the Reps into power into 94.

We want a real conservative.

11 posted on 11/16/2008 4:32:23 PM PST by Ghost of Philip Marlowe (Camelot? JFK hated communism. Obama is a communist.)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

The Wachingotn Compost, hard at work again propagandizing for the far left as they did in the general elections


12 posted on 11/16/2008 4:35:06 PM PST by ZULU (Non nobis, non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. God, guts and guns made America great.)
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To: bigbob
Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.”

He's got a point: Joe Lieberman, Zell Miller. Oh, wait. . .

13 posted on 11/16/2008 4:35:15 PM PST by SamuraiScot
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Lindberg once worked for the weekly magazine that the Unification Church started along with the Washington Times in the early days of the WT. He called himself a conservative then which was a misrepresentation. He was tricky and duplicitous then and remains so now. He is not right about this and it follows in a long career of being wrong.


14 posted on 11/16/2008 4:56:44 PM PST by AmericanVictory (Should we be more like them, or they like us?)
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To: AmericanVictory

Tod Lindberg got his first job back in the 1980s at Insight Magazine, published by the Washington Times, because he was a former college roomate of John Podhoretz, who was then one of the editors. He got his start due to cronyism and has never amounted to anything on his own. To say he is a disappointment would assume one every had high expectations. I never did, so I’m not disappointed he is just another liberal patsy underming the conservative movement.


15 posted on 11/16/2008 5:02:47 PM PST by WashingtonSource
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To: WashingtonSource

Thanks for the explanation. I remember that he wrote for the Washington Times and was confused to find his column carried by the WP. I know there must have been some sort of shake up at the WT because a lot of their writers seem to be at the DC Examiner now.


16 posted on 11/16/2008 5:09:36 PM PST by HokieMom (Pacepa : Can the U.S. afford a president who can't recognize anti-Americanism?)
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To: Free ThinkerNY
It isn't true.

Bullsh!t. I'm so tired of hearing this. It's absolute nonsense. Obama ran on a conservative platform - tax cuts, no gun control, etc. He invoked Reagan's name at one point.

17 posted on 11/16/2008 5:19:35 PM PST by Hardastarboard (America is so "twenty minutes ago")
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To: Free ThinkerNY

No, no - the door to the FAR left...


18 posted on 11/16/2008 5:46:58 PM PST by Tzimisce (http://groups.myspace.com/nailthemessiah)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

I’m still waiting for that “conservative resurgence” from just within the state of Massachusetts after leftist dominance for over fifty years and counting. In many ways, both “Chicago politics”, with all of its ongoing problems, and “Massachusetts politics”, with all of its ongoing problems, will soon go national, starting on January 20, 2009. I seriously don’t see any quick turnaround for the U.S. to become a conservative country anytime soon, but I seriously want to be very wrong about my predictions. The entire GOP, at every level, must seriously grow political spines and then always keep these spines permanently intact forever as an all around conservative political party, without any more RINO’s ever again and without any more “big tent” mentality ever again!


19 posted on 11/16/2008 5:57:37 PM PST by johnthebaptistmoore (Conservatives obey the rules. Leftists cheat. Who probably has the political advantage?)
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To: ari-freedom

As an argentinian I resent that remark. Nobody can turn a country into argentina, that takes special talent, it’s above Obama’s pay grade.


20 posted on 11/16/2008 5:59:39 PM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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