She was once the darling of conservatives like Newt Gingrich, but now you can't watch a television news-talk program without seeing her calling for more government and showing scorn for those who want less.
She's Arianna Huffington, website impresario and author of "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe".
I interviewed her for "20/20" last week because I was impressed by the success of the website she created. In just three years she made the Huffington Post a hot liberal opinion site.
What happened to Huffington's beliefs? In 1994, she worked to promote the Gingrich Revolution. She appeared at political events with Bob Dole.
"I definitely called myself a conservative," she told me. "I actually believed that the private sector would be able to address a lot of the issues that I believed were very important, like taking care of those in need. And then I saw firsthand how difficult it was. ... One of the problems with the Right is that they don't believe in facts, and they don't believe in evidence. And I was willing to change my mind, confronted with new evidence. And we would all be better off if we were willing to look at new evidence."
So she turned to big government.
"What we need is serious government policies to address poverty."
But they don't work, I said.
"They don't work as well as they should be working, but there's a lot more we can do."
She believes the old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program helped the poor and therefore welfare reform was not a good thing.
"[Reform was] not a success. A lot of people have been left without job training and therefore without the ability to really lead productive lives."
I pointed out that since welfare reform, eight million people left the welfare rolls, and many found jobs they like, jobs that pay better than welfare. Although her favorite political candidates say life for the poor has gotten worse, incomes of the poorest Americans are actually higher today.
Confronted with a chart showing that, Huffington acknowledged that lower-income people are generally better off.
"In general. In general ... But you know we have over 30 million Americans living below the poverty line."
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