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I Am Not an Ideologue

/ Wrote: Feb 04, 2010 8:00 PM

Election Day 1988 was only days away. Ronald Reagan was headlining a rally in Nevada. He said the options were the same as "when I stood before you." Reagan framed the Democratic "choice" as one for "liberal policies of tax and spend, economic stagnation, international weakness, accommodation, and always, always blame America first."

Reagan-era framing is regaining its relevance. Fair or not, liberalism's worst stereotypes have returned from the dead to haunt Democrats. "Tax and spend liberal," it's back with the charge of being soft on security threats – a claim that dogged Democrats from debates over crime to the Soviets to terrorism.

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David Paul Kuhn RealClearPolitics
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I Am Not an Ideologue

The President went to the House Republicans’ conference and proclaimed: “I am not an ideologue.”

Just like Richard Nixon: “I am not a crook.” Or Bill Clinton: “I did not have sex with that woman.” Or any number of other politicians’ emphatic pronouncements of what they were not when in fact they were, or were not doing when, of course, they were doing. Those of John Edwards could fill this column every week for the year.