“Liberal Overreach” Watch
by digby
[O]ne senior GOP strategist offers an interesting theory: John McCain and Barack Obama are the true “parents” of the Tea Party. Why McCain? The strategist said the Arizona Senator deserves credit for giving Palin a platform as well as planting seeds among white, non-college men by targeting them during the 2008 campaign. Why Obama? By pursuing an agenda that has that has been criticized by the right as an overreach of authority, he’s given a chorus of anti-government voices greater credibility.
You see, if he’d just passed the Republican agenda in its entirety as he was supposed to, none of this would have happened.
The funny thing is that if he’d broken with the Bush administration’s unconstitutional terror policies, he might have a better argument about the overreach of authority. (Actually, it wouldn’t make any difference to the right who think the government only “overreaches” when it uses money for thing they disapprove of.) But it would, at least, give the rest of us a way to make an argument. As it is, it’s kind of tough.
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