Finding merit in both support for Obama on Afghanistan and opposition on nearly everything else, Bill Kristol writes:
The most heartening development in the Age of Obama so far is this: the impressive behavior of conservatives and Republicans. They have been principled in their major domestic and foreign policy positions, have opposed Obama and advanced their own agenda in a savvy and sensible way, and have begun to find new and fresh spokesmen. There are some conservative pundits and GOP talking-heads who’ve kept themselves busy with navel-gazing and fratricidal-sniping—but they haven’t distracted most on the right from the job at hand.
This is precisely what drives the Obama team around the bend. The mere existence of opposition from the opposition party is considered an affront. The “Party of No” label told us more about the assumptions and perspective of the Obama team than it did about the Obama critics. Of course conservatives opposed Obama’s big-government schemes. This is, after all, what politicians, pundits, and activists who defend free markets, individual liberty, and decentralized government do. They oppose statism. But Obama and his supporters expected the opposition to fold and the president’s soothing rhetoric to disguise what was afoot.
By refusing to buy into the ludicrous Obama spin that he really didn’t want to run car companies, take over health care, or do permanent injury to market capitalism, conservatives have clarified exactly what Obama is up to. As infuriating as it may be to the Obama spin squad (which spent two years campaigning to convince Americans that Obama was a technocrat moderate), they now are at a loss to respond when conservatives point to the trillions in debt and the enormous expansion of government that Obama is trying his darnedest to ram through.
His critics are opposing Obama on the domestic front consistently and vociferously for a reason: Obama’s big-government agenda is anathema not only to conservatives but also to the electorate that occupies the vast middle ground in American politics. Refusing to go away—or “get out of the way,” as the president peevishly demanded—is conservatives’ greatest contribution of late because it serves continually to remind voters of Obama’s radical agenda. And that, for the president who never tires of telling us “he won,” is a bitter pill indeed.
