Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Julian Sanchez has a post about Obama and the right's reaction to him that really struck home. Julian Sanchez is a libertarian writer, a former Cato Institute analyst and contributing editor to Reason magazine. And he's surprised that he hasn't been more anti-Obama than he is and begins to wonder why. Here's his answer:
But here's what I think is actually happening. I pull up my feed reader in the morning and get the political news of the day as seen through the prism of two-party political conflict. These fall into two central categories. First, there are issues where Obama is only marginally more sane than Bush, but conservatives are outraged that lip service is being paid to sanity. Second, there are issues where Democrats are grinding along with some well-intentioned but probably harmful plan, and the Republican response is shrill, dishonest, offensive, and--if those fail--flat out psychotic. The latter end up grabbing my attention and provoking me to respond.Now, I realize this is somewhat irrational. Per Jane's Law, conservatives are angry because they're irrelevant, and it's hard to justify spending more time writing about their impotent rage than the actions of the people running the country. Moreover, this is the first step toward the sort of tribal thinking that our two-party system uses to cement coalitions that don't make any intrinsic sense. There's no a priori reason that someone's position on the morality of abortion or the desirability of single-payer health care ought to correlate with their assessment of the threat of anthropogenic global warming--unless it's that there's a correct set of positions that the wise and good will converge on, while the stupid and wicked are either duped or malicious enough to get it uniformly wrong. (I shouldn't caricature too much here: there are plenty of moderately prevalent views that you have to be a little dumb to hold, but they don't necessarily track any partisan split.) Sooner or later, discrete issues blur into the territory of opposing teams. So while I know I won't be able to entirely restrain myself, I'm going to make a conscious effort to pay attention to actual policy developments rather than the daily rage against the dying of the right.
I can relate to this, though unlike Sanchez I can honestly say that I've been blasting away at Obama on those issues where I disagree with him profoundly just as gleefully as I ever did Bush (which is easy, since those tend to be issues where Obama and Bush have taken the exact same positions). But I think he's on to something when he suggests that the insane reactions from the right to Obama's positions on all the other issues probably makes us less likely to criticize him lest we be associated with those crazy positions.
The right wing has a serious problem here. They can't criticize Obama for the things that he really deserves criticism for, like the state secrets privilege and the other ways in which he has continued to press for more and more executive power with less and less scrutiny and accountability, because those are issues where they agree with him and agreed with Bush when he took those same positions.
So they're forced to attack him on other issues. Some of those issues are legitimate but plainly show up their hypocrisy in supporting Bush for the last eight years, like government spending and running up the debt. And on others they've simply gone off the tinfoil hat deep end, like the birther nonsense, the ACORN and the census stuff, and so forth.
But the fact is that Obama has been solidly centrist to this point on almost every issue, which means that the right can only distinguish themselves from him by moving further to the right, which is exactly the opposite of what they have to do in order to regain any hope of putting together a winning coalition in any election coming up any time soon. And frankly, I'm enjoying watching them scurry to the fringe and make fools of themselves.
There are serious and legitimate criticisms of Obama to be made. I've made many of them, and others have made them on some of the issues I haven't written about. But the right wing can't make those criticisms without either being hypocrites or moving so far to the looney right that they scare the hell out of any political independent.
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Which makes me wonder if we wouldn't be better off with Obama moving much farther to the left and thereby allowing the right the room to move back toward the center.
Posted by: chris | July 6, 2009 9:57 AM
Oh please, since when has the right wing had any problem whatsoever with hypocrisy?
Posted by: gary l. day | July 6, 2009 10:09 AM
Oh please, since when has
the right wingany politician had any problem whatsoever with hypocrisy?There, fixed that for you. :-)
Posted by: David Durant | July 6, 2009 10:32 AM
It is indeed a good time for them, to have such attractive options.
And no, that wasn't sarcasm.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | July 6, 2009 10:39 AM
The Republicans could challenge the Democrats from another angle, though they've failed to do so. Instead of impotently attacking Obama's policies relative to old conservative failed talking points, there is ample room to attack Obama and the Dems on what functional experts argue are optimal policy positions.
The problem is that the Republicans appear to no longer have hardly any members left who are even capable of considering what experts argue. Huckabee, Boehner, and Palin can barely articulate simple talking points let alone understand arguments by economists or other relevant experts. Even Romney appears incapable of the latter trait. The other related problem they have is that I can't even find any functional experts with any credibility who are making arguments that are in any way related to conservative political policy positions; all the while conservatism appears to remain the default position for today's Republican party with few exceptions, e.g., Colin Powell. While they used to be the dissenting nonpowerful caucus in the tent when I joined in the 1970s, now they're virtually the only caucus left in the tent.
I find conservatism to be an abject failure in terms of governance every bit as dysfunctional as fascism or communism. So while the Republican party remains committed to the conservative movement, their road to power comes only through the failure of Democrats. The fact that the Democrats have no cogent arguments challenging their positions coming from the other party almost guarantees the Democrats' governance performance will be less than optimal since it makes them more vulnerable to provincialism and special interests. We see this with the cap and trade bill where Midwestern Democrats appear hesitant to properly assign the true economic costs for spewing coal on consumers who use coal-derived electricity.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 6, 2009 10:42 AM
This is the problem with a two party system. At some point one of the parties gets derailed and wanders off into irrelevance (or in this case wacky-land irrelevance). It happened with the Federalists in the 18-teens, this actually looks more like today's Republicans than the Whigs. The Federalists went off into extremist positions that disgusted most of the rest of the country, became a regional party and fizzled out. The Republicans are doing the same thing, all the way down to the secession arguments. Of course then you have the Whigs in the 1850s, unable to deal with slavery, but that was more of a factional split than a wing-nuttery takeover.
What we really need today is a party for the left. The Democrats have become the de facto moderate-conservative establishment party. To argue that Obama is a liberal is simply laughable. What we have today is ultra-right wing, moderate-conservative, and nothing really representing the left.
Posted by: dogmeatIB | July 6, 2009 1:03 PM
How about a party that respects the opinions of experts in their fields and seeks to implement them? At this point I'd rather have a rationalists party than any directional political clutch.
Posted by: Julian | July 6, 2009 1:51 PM
How about a party that respects the opinions of experts in their fields and seeks to implement them? At this point I'd rather have a rationalists party than any directional political clutch.
Like that's gonna happen... ;o)
Posted by: dogmeatIB | July 6, 2009 2:57 PM
I'm less worried about the left-right axis than about the authoritarian/libertarian one. Right now, we have a centrist authoritarian government opposed by a right-wing authoritarian opposition.
The opposition to some of the Government's policies may be batshit insane, but it's there. There's no opposition at all to erosion of basic liberties.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | July 6, 2009 3:04 PM
Posted by: Taz | July 6, 2009 8:09 PM
(However I'm nearly alone among political scientists in defending a two-party system, so don't pay any attention to me.)
Posted by: James Hanley | July 6, 2009 9:51 PM
@Taz #10:
Me too. Maybe Dylan Thomas might have said:
Do not go sane into that far, far right —
Rage, rage against the dying of thy might!
Posted by: PoxyHowzes | July 6, 2009 9:59 PM
James Hanley:
For me the issue isn't so much market concentration as barriers to entry. An 8-party system wouldn't be much better than a 2-party system if it was hard to get a new part started.
I think the ideal system is much like a highly competitive market, many small parties constantly entering, competing and being annihilated.
Posted by: James K | July 7, 2009 1:18 AM
D.C. Sessions stated:
"I'm less worried about the left-right axis than about the authoritarian/libertarian one. Right now, we have a centrist authoritarian government opposed by a right-wing authoritarian opposition.
The opposition to some of the Government's policies may be batshit insane, but it's there. There's no opposition at all to erosion of basic liberties."
This is right on. The left and right bickering is a smoke screen for this progression in my opinion.
Posted by: King of Ireland | July 7, 2009 12:59 PM
Whereas with a multi-party system you always have one (or more) of the parties wandering off into irrelevance. Duverger's law and all that.
While you can have problems in multi-party systems, just like any political system, I would argue that a well designed multi-party system is inherently more representative of the people and their stance on issues, beliefs, etc., than you ever see in a two party system. Personally I would argue that a multi-party system forces politicians to be more honest (note I said more honest, not honest) than a two party system, we see it a lot in the US.
Was McCain what the Republicans really wanted? Was he what 60 million Americans really wanted? Was Obama what the Democrats really wanted? Was he what 70 million Americans really wanted? How many Americans voted against the other guy rather than for "their guy?"
Also, if they do something that you don't like, in a two party system, what are you going to do? After eight years of Republican mismanagement, Obama and the Democrats really, seriously have to screw up to lose the next two or three congressional elections and the '12 election. Is that really in our best interests?
"Don't screw up?"
Posted by: dogmeatIB | July 7, 2009 4:50 PM
Just a comment about the axis change you speak of D.C Sessions.
I agree that the left/right axis is incomplete, as well as the conservative/liberal axis. I too look more along authoritarian/egalitarian (I know you chose libertarian but egalitarian is a more accurate opposite side of the spectrum I believe) but the question always arises; What will the ensuring/enforcement of the egalitarian/libertarian system look like??
Any system adopted will by nature be fluid and have to be "defended" or "enforced" in some manner. How will that look? Some authority will have to evolve or be in place I think.
Posted by: Greg | July 8, 2009 5:29 AM