All kinds of prominent national figures are characterizing the 2012 presidential election as a key turning point, and in his latest column, E.J. Dionne Jr. agrees.
For the first time since Barry Goldwater made the effort in 1964, the Republican Party is taking a run at overturning the consensus that has governed U.S. political life since the Progressive era.
Obama is defending a tradition that sees government as an essential actor in the nation's economy, a guarantor of fair rules of competition, a countervailing force against excessive private power, a check on the inequalities that capitalism can produce, and an instrument that can open opportunity for those born without great advantages.
Today's Republicans cast the federal government as an oppressive force, a drag on the economy and an enemy of private initiative…. The GOP is engaged in a wholesale effort to redefine the government help that Americans take for granted as an effort to create a radically new, statist society. […]
Republicans are increasingly inclined to argue that any redistribution (and Social Security, Medicare, student loans, veterans benefits and food stamps are all redistributive) is but a step down the road to some radically egalitarian dystopia.
Given all of this, Dionne concludes that it's Obama who'll be “the conservativeâ€