Huh?

I’ve been listening to lefty radio semi-regularly for a couple of months. It’s quite a paranoid party they have going on. And the election this week has them really off the rails. I find the endless carping about corporations [shiver!] kind of amusing. And god bless them, I know their hearts are even in the right place sometimes.

But this afternoon I heard a couple of assertions that put the joke to the claim that they’re the reality-based community.

• Barack Obama is not a Progressive. He’s a moderate, centrist Democrat.
• In the 1950s, Obama would have been a Republican.

Wow. Just wow.

I suppose, if all Barry wants is a Euro-style social democracy and welfare state, he is less extreme than the Progressive socialists communists. And if the D team is being led by Prog ideas, Barry, judging by his Bush-like policies, is moderate and centrist.

But I can’t come up with much support for the claim that he would have been standing with Ike:

Eisenhower entered the 1952 presidential race to counter the isolationism of Sen. Robert A. Taft, and to crusade against "Communism, Korea and corruption". He won by a landslide, defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson and ending two decades of the New Deal Coalition holding the White House.

And Eisenhower wasn’t afraid of the concept of victory, and making the vanquished surrender unconditionally.

I guess Barry would have stood with the Republicans of the 1950s in their work to dismantle segregation. In that sense, on that issue, Obama would have been a Republican, just like MLK (pdf).