[lbo-talk] I agree with this Weekly Standard editor...

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Wed Dec 8 10:32:11 PST 2010


...Matthew Continetti, who I went to high school with. He'll always be Matt to me.

I knew him, since we were both in theater. He was a quiet, religiously-inclined boy two grades below me. But you could sense the rage inside him....

No link - it's from their email newsletter...

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Well, I'm in a good mood. It only took about a month after the midterm election for President Obama to start moving to the center-right. In the last week, the president has (a) frozen salaries for non-defense federal employees, (b) negotiated a major trade deal with South Korea, and (c) agreed to a two-year extension of current tax rates along with a temporary reduction in the payroll tax. At this rate he'll be haggling with Paul Ryan over the fine points of the Roadmap for America's Future by next August.

The tax deal, moreover, falsifies two myths. The first is that Obama is incapable of moving to the center. I confess, I had my doubts. The man is too professorial, too committed to the liberal view of the world. What I forgot was that he is also a politician who seeks reelection. If his speech announcing the tax deal is any indication, Obama will kick and scream as he works with Republicans in the next Congress. He does not like ceding ground to American conservatism. But that's fine. He doesn't have to like it. What's important is that conservative ideas will have an opportunity to work.

The other myth? That the left matters. Oh, they'll howl that Obama is abandoning his base. They'll point to the emerging center-right fiscal consensus, the lack of a public option in the health care bill, the president's continued intervention in Afghanistan. They'll make a fair case, especially when it comes to Obama's relations with Wall Street, that the president is an elitist who has no connection or sympathy with the common man. The talk shows and headlines will be filled with chatter that Obama's "betrayal" will hurt him in 2012.

But none of it will make any difference. For the fact is that, while the center-left is overrepresented in the public discourse, the liberal core is limited to around 20 to 30 percent of the electorate. There are far more votes to mine in the places where voters identify as conservative. Anyone can see that—even the president. So the question isn't whether Obama can survive the disaffection of the left. It's whether Republicans will be ready when the president tries to poach the center-right.



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