Conservative Donnybrook

So far, since winning the Democratic nomination, Obama has made abrupt moves toward the center on civil liberties, abortion, faith-based programs, welfare, gun control, and the death penalty. Have I left anything out? Iraq, you say? Surely, as the centerpiece of the Obama campaign has been his insistence on a 16-month timetable for withdrawal, he wouldn’t flip-flop Iraq? Yes He Can! Well you see, of course, changing facts on the ground, and the assessment of his commanders, and facts that may become available to the Commander in Chief that he could not have known mumble mumble mumble… 

This actually getting embarrassing. Obama’s been telling us that the country’s ready for a realignment, but he didn’t mention that the grand political realignment would be that of Barack Obama himself, lurching rightward with whiplash-inducing suddenness. But we know that Obama is a deft if not ruthless politician, so isn’t exactly surprising. However, might all this be a little too deft, and risk alienating his most committed supporters, while leaving himself seeming unprincipled and capricious to the broader electorate? 

But all this centrism and triangulating is, in fact, a proven winner, is it not? Who, hardnosed Dems ask, wants another Dukakis or Mondale? Eyes on the prize: the Third Way leads to the White House! But remember that Clinton ran as a centrist during the primaries, when it actually took some courage to do so. (Obama: More Slippery than Clinton!) And Obama’s supposed to be the Left’s Reagan, bringing the entire nation around to his program through force of his savvy, optimism, and a unique historical moment, right? But lately he’s seemed less Reagan than Romney.

UPDATE: Kaus/Bloggingheads on Obama versus Clinton.

UPDATE: Bacevich on Obama, Bush, and Iraq.