Monday, December 1, 2008

Centrist for Liberal Ends

Fred Barnes, denizen of the Right and Fox News for a long time now, is shocked, I repeat shocked, by how 'centrist' and 'pragmatist' Barack Obama is, now that he is making his Cabinet and staff selections.

There's a larger point here. It's not that Obama, despite his unswervingly liberal record in the Senate, turns out to be a pragmatist. The point is he's pragmatic (so far) in one direction-rightward. Who knew?

Well, any open-minded observer knew. I knew, and said so numerous times on this blog. Blogger Andrew Sullivan knew and writes:

He is not now and never has been a leftist ideologue. That was a paranoid fantasy that helped kill the GOP this year. He is a pragmatic, sane, reasoned centrist liberal. He doesn't want to surrender to terror or abolish capitalism - he wants to hone our fight against the Islamists to better effect and to save capitalism from itself. And the core meaning of his candidacy - an end to the polarizing culture war battles of the post-Vietnam era - is not just hype. It's real

But here's the key that the Right doesn't get apparently. Obama will be using his pragmatic, centrist temperament for 'liberal' ends, such as Middle East peace, fighting global warming, helping the little guy, reforming the financial and economic system, shrinking the nuclear stockpiles of the world, etc.

So I hope you like that as well, right-wingers. I know your children and grandchildren will.

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