Reply #79: According to Obama

[zipplewrath]

HCR was "not all that much different" than what the GOP proposed under Clinton. Immigration reform was originally passed under Reagan. McCain, prior to this year, was for immmigration reform. And what climate change legislation has passed so far?

It is a DLC trick, one they learned from Reagan actually. Clinton called it triangulation. Basically it is staking out positions to take an issue away from your opponent. Basically, you find the extreme and move away from it. So you take your opponent, find his extreme corner and try to position yourself just the other side of there. Of course that may mean you're a long way from the vast majority of the area of the triangle, but that doesn't matter. It traps your opponent in his corner.

In the Clinton era, it's how we got things like DADT and DOMA. He moved TOWARDS the GOP to corner them in their extreme position. Obama did the same thing with the Health Insurance Stimulus Package. He moved towards the GOP to corner them. It worked. Of course, all the progressive ideas got "rejected" along the way. He also had to reverse himself on some issues upon which he campaigned, such as mandates, cadillac taxes, and drug price negotiations. But that's not important in triangulation. Because by moving towards the GOP you move away from the center of the democratic party. But what are they suppose to do? Run around and join the GOP?

Reagan gets idolized these days (as does Obama actually) even though by any rational review of what he did, it wasn't particularly conservative. But he was forever co-opting democratic issues and making them his own. Did ya know that Ralph Abernathy endorsed Reagan the first time around? Reagan's lone contribution to the "defense build up" was bringing a battleship out of mothballs (which was then mothballed by Bush I IIRC) and restarting the B-1 contract (which would end up grounded through the entire first gulf war). Carter actually put the rest of the military build up under contract in his one term. The 600 ship navy was of Carter's design. (He was an old navy guy after all). And he almost negotiated away our ENTIRE nuclear arsenal. Mention that to a conservative some day.

And no, I'm not going to give you "pro forma" pointers to all of this. Feel free to read a history book at your leisure. Abernathy's book is a good one.