Obama isn't radical. His party is.

It therefore seems odd, even to this anti-administration conservative, to argue that Obama governs as an extremist (the “most radical president in American history,” according to Newt Gingrich) when he pushes the same initiatives that Hillary or any other Democrat would have championed. When it comes to health care reform, the failed Clinton program of 1993 (universally known as “HillaryCare”) was an even more sweeping and bureaucratic expansion of intrusive government power than Obama’s legislation of 2010. The pork-laden stimulus package, the cap-and-trade proposals and out-of-control government spending all resemble strikingly similar proposals that Clinton advanced in her presidential campaign…

Republicans would fare better if they criticized the unyielding extremism of the Democratic Party as a whole rather than focusing on the president as a singular example of fanaticism. Conservatives overstate their case and undermine their own momentum with shaky claims that the ideological perspective of the White House qualifies as “unprecedented,” “Marxist,” “shocking” or “radical.” His critics could rightly identify the president and his henchmen as conventional, Big Government, borrow-and-spend liberals — a designation that most voters understand (and dislike). He has aroused determined GOP opposition not because he seeks to lead the nation in unexplored and perilous new directions, but because he seeks to restore the misguided welfare state priorities that characterized his party, and failed, for decades.