Reply #6: Sorry, WEL, on Andrew Sullivan's blog, he has been

[beachmom]

going on and on about all of the out of control spending under Bush's watch, and all the Libertarian types are pissed, too. The spending keeping up with the pace of LBJ (who after all, was funding a war and his Great Society program) has been a particular sore point for them. That's why I am close to sure, that's what the e-mailer is referring to. I don't think anyone would refer to Bush as a liberal on social issues, even with the Meirers nomination (and she may be rabidly anti-abortion -- who knows). And certainly not on foreign policy, unless you think neo-conservativism is a synonymn for liberalism (they were former Democrats from the 60s, you know, right?) Sarcasm, you can hopefully infer.

Anyway, going back to the word liberal, in Europe it means for a free market system with limited government regulation AND for not interfering with people's private lives. So you have the FDP (Free Democrats) in Germany, who are a pro-business party headed up by a gay politician. Totally bizarro.

The thing is, I don't even know what liberal means anymore in American politics. The Right throws anything negative on it, and the Dems have backed away from that word. I guess I'm in the middle on government spending. Obviously, I oppose government spending for faith based programs, Halliburton, airline bailouts, and unneccessary wars. But I also don't think the government can solve every problem, and certainly don't want to see an upper tax bracket of 50%, like there was in Germany for a time. I think the tax rate in the 90s under Clinton was just right, and shouldn't have been messed with. I don't know about any of you, but inflation seems to have eaten any benefit I received from my * tax cut, so it's like we're back to 2000. AND we have a huge deficit.