Lil White Lies: Those were the Days

Campaign messaging is different today, and Bryan White is here to first explain how it was different prior to this, in another blog entry critical of a recent column by Robyn Blumner :

“Barack Obama rode popular sentiment to his election as president of the United States. Obama ran on the unpopularity of Republicans and a message of bipartisan change that transformed shortly after election day to a message of partisan change.”

Is this a joke?! The Republicans themselves were NOT unpopular, George W. Bush was unpopular. Bryan then implies that Obama changed message from bi-partisan to partisan change once he became president. So, who’s called the Party of NO right now? Well, according to idealist and conservative *Bryan White, always Right*:

“Electoral politics is about forging coalitions. It cannot succeed at the national level through the appeal to any brand of extremism which a majority strongly opposes.”

He’s got to be kidding: Is this a joke too? A few weeks ago, I published this cartoon about dabbling:

The cartoon speaks to Bryan’s comment, and these words from Blumner:

“Tea party insurgencies used that same tactic in primaries across the country. They tarred establishment-backed Republicans who gave off the slightest hint of cooperation with Democrats or Obama.”

Over the years, the Republican party has become more right-wing, while the Democrat party has become more left-wing. There’s no such thing these days as “Liberal Republicans” or “Conservative Democrats” with very very few exceptions. The moderates or those  in the “middle” are gone.

Right now, it’s a bad economy and an off-year election which is prompting many independent voters to “throw the bums out” who just happen to be mostly Democrats. The “extremism” is being disregarded for the most part, because the will of the voters is not as much for, as it is “against” whoever’s holding office. I also think some of those tea party candidates are all talk—I will be curious to see what they do when they get into office and realize the only way to get anything done is to “forge coalitions.”

Bryan White needs to get out of the office (or wherever he is) more often.

Postscript:  Uh, hold that thought!  A recent posting at Sublime Bloviations gives new meaning to extremism in the mainstream, at least according to Bryan White.