“Republicans don’t know how to run against Obama because he has governed as one of them from the start.”
If the Republicans have been sounding particularly insane, this year, it’s because Barack Obama has staked out so much traditional Republican political territory, they have been forced into Loony Land. The GOP presidential contenders spend their time taking bizarre positions on social issues as “a direct result of Barack Obama having taken over every other Republican talking point.” Obama has traveled “as far to the right as Ronald Reagan but Democrats still see him as their savior, the facts be damned.”
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It seems strange that the issues of abortion and contraception have taken up such a large proportion of Republican campaign rhetoric. Every Republican presidential debate features candidates outdoing one another in declaring their opposition to a woman’s right to choose abortion.
The prominence of these outlier issues are a direct result of Barack Obama having taken over every other Republican talking point. Before he even took office Obama showed whose side he was on when he made it clear that he would continue the bailouts to the banks that George W. Bush began. He has expanded America’s defense budget and the wars that inevitably result. His “grand bargain” with conservatives has resulted in cuts to government programs and an agreement on austerity measures which are the exact opposite of what should be done to improve the economy and prospects for unemployed people.
Republicans don’t know how to run against Obama because he has governed as one of them from the start. They may mutter about “Obamacare” but his health care plan is a bailout of the health insurance industry and Big Pharma. They can’t call him weak on defense issues when he sends drones to kill people in Afghanistan or Pakistan or when he makes good on his threat to kill Muammar Gaddafi. Even American citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki are not safe when the president decides to literally take them out.
Gingrich may call Obama the food stamp president now, but neither man had any problems with the other when they joined forces to conduct a jeremiad against public education. Gingrich was welcomed to the White House, and he joined Obama mininion Al Sharpton in pushing for privatization of the schools and promoting a panoply of deadly corporate school “reform” measures.
In the big picture (i.e. from Europe), it's all true. But many Americans are deeply grounded in "whatever I was raised with is normal, and left and right are defined relative to that."
Great site. Too much Flash, but I can live with it.
WHY? 
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