ALL REACTION ALL THE TIME:

Conservative, Liberal, Principled (E. J. Dionne Jr., March 29, 2005, Washington Post)

For at least a decade now, conservatives have gleefully called their political foes "reactionary liberals" whose main task, they say, is the preservation of a New Deal-Great Society status quo. Since the 2004 election gave narrow but firm control of Washington's two elected branches of government to a Republican Party committed to conservatism, the dominant political narrative has highlighted the right's effectiveness and the left's fecklessness.

Yet the liberals' opposition to many of Bush's policies -- in particular his Social Security program and his tax cuts for the wealthy -- cannot be dismissed as a blind rejection of whatever this controversial president proposes. If there is a principle that unites the left side of the political spectrum, it is a belief that an energetic government can effectively use progressive taxation to insure the poor, the unlucky and the elderly against undue hardship. Bush's embrace of the partial privatization of Social Security has thus united liberals and created a sense of momentum unusual for the left during the Bush years.

United them in defense of the status quo, against an energetic use of government and tax policy that would empower and enrich the poor, the unlucky and the elderly. Does anyone doubt that if Bill Clinton had backed this kind of reform it would have passed the Republican Congress with bipartisan support, just as Welfare reform eventually did?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2005 8:58 PM