Reply #108: You can't really lump Obama in with people his own age

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The Jack Abramoffs and Ralph Reeds of his age were part of Reagan-era movement conservatism. They were being plugged into relatively high-profile think-tank jobs and such by 1983-84, and those were the years that shaped them. They also were heavily influenced by the conservatives of an earlier generation that they associated with in groups like CNP.

Obama spent his childhood mostly in Indonesia and then in multi-ethnic Hawaii. He graduated from college in 1983 and spent the peak years of the Reagan administration, from 1983 to 1988, as a community organizer -- hiding out, if you will. There was simply no way he could have absorbed Reagan-era social conservatism during those years.

He then attended Harvard Law School -- where he was presumably associating mainly with people five years younger than himself -- followed by another five years back in Chicago, doing more community organizer stuff, teaching law, and writing.

That is simply not the resume of a social conservative. It is not the resume of someone who could ever have spent much time hanging out with social conservatives -- unless you count the people of the black churches that he would have known in Chicago. Obama may be a pragmatist by temperament, and something of a technocrat. His wandering childhood may have left him with a hankering for stability. But he knows what side he's on, and that is not the side of the wealthy, the side of bigots, or the side of exploiters.