The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell, like NRO's John Derbyshire, is probably someone I should ignore now that it's finally morning in America, for the rest of us. But Bozell's latest outburst is useful in pointing up the complete say-anything hypocrisy of the right wing as it tries to get used to the idea of a President Obama.
As Media Matters reported Friday, just two weeks ago Bozell was on "Fox and Friends" frothing about Obama espousing "socialism." But today he told Fox's Bill Hemmer "that Barack Obama ran as a Reaganite and won over the fiscal -- the public as a fiscal conservative." Bozell continued: "That means that Barack Obama does not have the mandate to enact the left-wing agenda he wants to enact. He didn't run on it, he ran from it."
Few conservatives are quite as blatantly dishonest as Bozell, but this is generally how the discourse has shifted. I should also note that Media Matters had already done pretty much what I asked for on Wednesday: a study examining where the country's "center" really lies, and showing how much closer it is to liberalism than Bush-Cheney-Rove conservatism.
In other news: I will stop being such a starry-eyed Obama fan soon, I promise, but I loved his line today about wanting to get a shelter puppy for his daughters, which would likely be mixed-breed, or "a mutt, like me." I think he's already made it easier to talk about race in this country, and it's only going to get better.
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