I've been saying for years that President Obama is one of the most conservative Democrats ever to sit in the White House. Well, one of Ronald Reagan's advisers
apparently agrees with me.
Former Reagan administration domestic policy aide Bruce Bartlett argued in a recent essay that Obama "has charted a center-right course" with regard to foreign and domestic policy:
Populating his administration with hawks like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama has presided over new military engagements abroad while overseeing a draconian crackdown on national security leaks at home, Bartlett notes.
Meanwhile, Obama has pursued “very conservative” fiscal policies, Bartlett writes, signing a stimulus package that was far smaller than what experts and advisers like Christina Romer found would be necessary to really prime the nation’s economic pump. Moreover, Obama has conducted himself like a deficit hawk, “proposing much deeper cuts in spending and the deficit than did the Republicans during the 2011 budget negotiations,” when a deal eluded the two parties. And don’t buy into the the GOP “harping” that Obama hates business, Bartlett cautions. The president, he says, “has bent over backward to protect corporate profits.”
What about the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement? That, too, is evidence of Obama’s conservatism, Bartlett writes. Observing that Obamacare’s market-based approach drew on a model put forth by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Bartlett contrasts Obamacare with a real left-wing alternative like universal Medicare. So why are conservatives so obstinately opposed to a fundamentally conservative health care law? “The only thing is that it was now supported by a Democratic president that Republicans vowed to fight on every single issue,” Bartlett writes.
Bartlett's last point touches upon the one thing that has driven the recent radicalization of the Republican Party more than anything else, and this radicalization has culminated in the purging of nearly all moderates from the GOP ranks. Charlie Crist, the former GOP governor of Florida who is now running for that post as a Democrat, famously
remarked: "I didn't leave the Republican Party -- it left me."
That's where the genius of Obama's strategy comes into play. By adopting conservative positions, the President has backed the Republican Party into a corner and forced it to become increasingly radicalized in its quest to opposed All Things Barack. In other words, he took the GOP's Achilles Heel, namely, the intense hatred within its ranks for America's first Black president, and fully exploited it to the long-term detriment of the Republican Party.
Indeed, the list of Republican ideas that the GOP now opposes
simply because Obama endorsed them is a lengthy one. This list includes Pay-Go, state flexibility in welfare programs implementation, the Bipartisan Deficit Commission, the Individual Health Care Mandate, Cap and Trade, trying terrorism suspects in federal court, Medicare cost savings, and transparency in campaign contributions.
My big question is whether the GOP can avoid its demise as a national party by successfully pivoting from its radical positions after Obama leaves office. Rand Paul has been
recently pushing the necessity of making such attempts, but I think GOP efforts along these lines would be akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
