Conservatives Think They've Found Obama's Weakness

Conservative pundits are nothing if not repetitive. For example, I feel like I've now heard this line of attack on Obama about five times. The gist is that Obama's actually liberal.

It's probably something to worry about. I wonder how the Obama campaign will respond. Hopefully they will not go out of their way to show that he's not a "conventional liberal." You have to support a lot of conservative policy prescriptions to not be a conventional liberal (but wouldn't that just make you a conservative?).

Of course, this isn't about supporting policies that actually work as much as it's about showing your "independence" from "special-interest groups."

I see absolutely no need for doing something like this. Ever once hear a voter express this concern? The election won't be about what's wrong with the Democrats- it'll most likely be about how terrible Republicans are. Democrats don't have nearly as much to prove as Republicans do.

Sometimes these conservative pundits sound like they've said the same things about liberals since the 80s. Times have changed. I just can't imagine these charges resonating, but I could be wrong.

Plus it won't be about ideology, if the primaries are a reliable indication. Obama does not make liberal ideology his image. He's run a campaign where policy and ideology have taken a backseat to personality and his message about hope and unity. Conservatives will have to work extra hard to make ideology an issue, and that could backfire because of conservatism's pretty lousy recent track record.

And finally, Obama isn't that conventional. If you look at his stances on poverty, education, and a host of other things, he has embraced the most innovative and I'd say least ideological approaches. He's not perfect, and some of the conventional solutions have more merit than he thinks.

Also, this column shows just how the weird the conservative relationship with the Clintons is. At first he's like "thank god another Clinton might not be elected, because conservatives hate them" and then at the end Bill Clinton is held up as a model liberal because of all the conservative positions he took!