Obama is not that far from Romney. Newt Gingrich is not alone in excoriating him as “the most radical, leftist president in American history,” but that’s history as hallucination.
The most surprising fact about Obama’s presidency is its continuity with that of his predecessor — on the auto bailout, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, presidential power and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to name a few.
His 2009 stimulus package was far smaller than liberals wanted and included a large array of tax cuts. His health care reform incorporated concepts once pushed by Republicans, such as an individual mandate. Bruce Bartlett, an economist who served in the Reagan administration, rates the president “moderately conservative.”
The evidence of a sharply ideological, polarized citizenry comes mostly from primary elections that are anything but representative. Santorum won the Minnesota caucuses by persuading less than 1 percent of registered voters. When Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, he got less than 10 percent of those registered to vote.
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