An image of the Obama administration is starting to take shape, and its contours seem to resemble the fecklessness so perfectly embodied by Jimmy Carter.  We begin with the stark contrast between what Mr. Obama says and his actions.  He has severely criticized the previous administration for its spendthrift policies, creating deficits in place of a large surplus, and protracting a war in the Middle East.

Now this freshly minted president, without so much as a moment of prior executive experience, is proposing to spend at a level that would mandate $800 billion interest payments on the debt every year, for years to come.  He's adding troops to Afghanistan and will continue the CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, while irritating Iranian leaders with a PR video they immediately dismissed, and, he seems to be sputtering in his attempts to keep Kim Jong Il in a box.

Liberals in congress and across the blogosphere are irate (Robert Kuttner/Huffingtonpost) and attacking their own in ways that again recall Carter's curious attempts to deal with a rapidly deteriorating economy and problems abroad.  The confidence that Obama exuded during the campaign has been replaced by a recurrent annoyance at his own party leaders who seem intent upon questioning his every move, concerned, as well they should be, that spending more in a couple months than the nation spent in its first two hundred-plus years, should give us pause.

What's so stunning is that Obama argues that health care, energy policy, and education also can't wait--we must lump them into this massive spending because, as his chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel said, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.  Given his poorly rehearsed performance in dealing with the complexities of the banking and housing meltdown, what can we expect from him in these critical areas?

Americans are, by nature and history, a tolerant lot, and they like to give new presidents time to find their leadership footing.  But evidence that their patience is fraying has become apparent and Obama's teleprompter glibness and personal charm are beginning to wear thin, as is his insistence that he alone knows what's best for our ailing economy.  Indeed, when the Huffingtonpost.com mounts substantive counterarguments to liberal economist Paul Krugman, who has argued against retaining the financial instrument known as securitization,  we have a crisis of liberal thinking.

Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace interviewed Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a conservative who noted that Canada doesn't allow securitized mortgages, which among other complexities are sold and resold with almost no understanding of their true worth.  Moreover, he stated Canada will pull out of the current economic slump rather smartly, without the kind of deficit spending Mr. Obama is demanding. 

All of this must be particularly vexing to the liberal establishment in America, convinced as it was that controlling the White House and congress would be the Holy Grail of politics.  Well, let's not gloat because if Obama and his Democratic brethren in congress fail, America fails, and few of us want that.  However, we also don't want to live in a socialist or quasi-socialist state, so it's incumbent upon conservatives to highlight the supreme folly of Obama's budget, his so-called rescue attempts, as well as his naive approach to dealing with the likes of Iran.

With assistance from liberals, who are incandescent with anger over Obama's faithful allegiance to the Bush approach here and abroad, perhaps a return to a more modest proposal may emanate from the White House.  It's unlikely, but it's all we can hope for.

A telltale sign of political naivete in foreign affairs is when a president believes he's implementing an unprecedented approach to inherited problems when, in fact, it's the same tired script, just re-written, this time with embarrassing enthusiam.  Such is the case with President Obama, whose recent video message to Iran epitomized the Harvard University approach to a problem that has vexed presidents for nearly three decades.

For two views of Mr. Obama's initiative, and its chances for even marginal success, we turn first to David Blair, writing in the UKTelegraph.  His take, predictable by any historical measure, is that by appealing to Iran's youth and touting Iran's rich cultural legacy, the intransigent leadership will be flummoxed as to how they should respond.  The argument is that former President Bush made their job easy because his approach was so unambiguously anti-Iran that it produced a "visceral anti-Americanism" in response.

With elections looming in Iran, Blair believes Obama will be restrained with respect to sanctions, which will presumably deprive Ahmadinejad of the opportunity to "parade his outrage."  Yet another point that leads Blair to a sunny optimism is a line from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader in response to Obama's message:  "If America changes its behaviour, we will change ours."

Since a studied ambiguity is the centerpiece of any intelligent foreign policy, it's obvious the Ayatollah has the upper hand in this initial skirmish.  His implied quid pro quo is precisely what the State Department types find so enticing and leads them to believe, to paraphrase Chamberlain, that peace is at hand.  It's monstrously misguided in the best of circumstances, but in dealing with a belligerent that has sworn to destroy Israel and calls America the Great Satan, it elevates the obtuse to Mensa-like heights.

Pulling ourselves back from the brink of the lemmings-leap, we turn to Mort Zukerman, writing in the New York Daily News.   Among many other historical lessons, he notes that "Every U.S. administration since 1979--yes, including the last one--has reached out to the Iranians", and the response has been the same--a "clenched fist."  For reasons as beguiling as particle physics, many on the left are convinced they can script a belligerent's responses to their expressions of good will, that there's a universal language of decency, if only they can decode it.

Unlike Blair's breezy characterization of Iranian leaders as men of eminent reason, Zukerman has both feet on the rhetorical ground: 

The clock is ticking inexorably, a race against time that Iran is winning, getting nearer every day presenting the world with an Iranian bomb as a fait accompli.

He talks like a man who understands the icy world of international relations where diplomatic machinations are the only language nations share, and where craven self-interest is the only motivator.  In that context, harsh sanctions is the only meaningful precursor to the credible threat of military action, an inevitability that Mr. Obama will have to recognize, now or later.

Although the economy is consuming Obama's immediate attention, we must confront the more latent--but nonetheless real, and grim--possibility of an Iran with a nuclear weapon, which would instantly transform the politics of the Middle East, in a way that would dwarf our concerns about GDP or unemployment.  If, as Obama has asserted, a nuclearized Iran is "unacceptable," perhaps he should start acting that way.

Indeed, given the fact that most experts put their acquisition time-line at about twelve months, one might think Mr. Obama would sound a more urgent tone in his lofty video message.  He should realize that this is not a dress rehearsal--there won't be a second change to get this right.

If you feel there's little to cheer about in President Obama's proposed budget--which would guarantee deficits for many years and grow the percent of GDP consumed by government--then take a moment to consider the real agenda that's developing on the horizon.  For a glimpse of liberalism's limitless appetite, we turn to E.J. Dionne, who doesn't want trillion dollar deficits to dampen your political lust for "health care reform, energy conservation, and the expansion of educational opportunities."

Dionne argues that "There is certainly no way government can walk away from its responsibilities on education," and most Americans would agree with him.  That responsibility might begin by offering inner city parents the same choice Mr. Obama and his elites have to send their children to the nation's best schools.  That's call 'school choice' and it works everywhere it's been tried.  But, for Dionne and his lefties, improving graduation rates and test scores has nothing to do with confronting failing schools, but rather, super-sizing the already bloated public school funding that's led to a monopoly, and the rank indifference it breeds.

His bland assertion that government must "reform health care" makes us guess what he might have in mind.  Since there's millions in the stimulus package to prepare the nation for this initiative, one can only guess Obama means to fundamentally change how our health care is delivered, and it's doubtful the market place will have any say in the matter.  Indeed, if there's a discernible theme in Obama's Leviathan spending plan it's that we can expect to be overwhelmed by money, but every dollar has liberal strings attached.

It's all about molding behavior, one person at a time.  In the energy arena it means taxing carbon-based fuels and declaring carbon dioxide a toxic chemical, this despite the fact that at least 90 percent of greenhouse warming from CO2 is from water vapor.  As Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com writes in his new book, "Green Hell":

There is no scientific evidence indicating that carbon dioxide, much less man-made carbon dioxide emissions, control or even measurably impact global climate. This is true whether you look at data going back 650,000 years, data from the twentieth century, or even data from the past ten years.  Alarmist predictions of climatic doom are based exclusively on hypothetical mathematical models that have never been validated against the real world.

The fact that 31,000 scientists refused to sign the United Nation's so-called consensus on global warming, and only 2,000 did, might tell you something about the integrity of the left's goal to push us into alternative fuels that could hobble our economy for decades.

Our Founding Fathers designed our government with the deliberate intent of ensuring that the passage of legislation and implementation of laws would require a series of tests, including a vast array of checks and balances.  The bicameral system, with staggered terms of service, with the House being the body closest to the people and requiring two Senators per state regardless of geographic size or population, was the surest way to ensure that only reasonable bills would ever see the light of day.

However, when the majority of our elected officials seem to be minted from the same peculiar political alloy, one determined to raise stupidity to a virtue, where do we turn for common sense?

It's been said that what humans fear most is a maze with a series of false centers.  Well, Washington is the political equivalent, and Obama seems intent upon creating an endless universe of false centers, all fully funded.

With the passage of time, anomolies, whether biological or political, inevitably surface.  Such is the case with the stunning revelation that I'm in agreement with Arianna Huffintgon, whose post concerning the AIG bonus debacle charges the Obama administration with hypocrisy and cynicism.

As you've doubtless learned, officials at Treasury supposedly insisted on a modification of a provision allegedly inserted into the stimulus bill by Sen. Chris Dodd (with co-author Sen. Ron Whden) that would have prohibited bonuses at companies receiving tax payer funds.  Now, Dodd is being accused of game-playing with the language and is fighting withi TS Geithner.  But however this turns out, as Huffington correctly asserts, it creates a credible trail to someone in Obama's administration.

In a rare disagreement with Charles Krauthammer, who argues that the bonuses reflect a pittance, a tempest in a teapot, I see it as yet further evidence that political considerations routinely trump not only common sense, but the common good.  Huffington quotes Sen. Wyden, who lamented:

It is the ultimate indictment of what Washington has become.  It's a place where, again and again, the public interest is deep-sixed behind closed doors and without any fingerprints.

From children in poverty to the challenges in the Middle East, ours is a trouble world.  But America has always been a place where the virtues of decency and good will brought out the best in its citizens.  Although every generation has examples of unethical, cynical, or illicit behavior by elected officials, when the values that underlie our political system become tainted by craven self-interest, when judgment is corrupted by a thorough-going disregard for moral precepts, we've effectively entered a new age informed by incipient anarachy.

What does this say about Mr. Obama, who, along with Geithner, certainly must have known about these bonuses?  There is clearly some kind of inadvertent disconnect between Obama's overwrought, socialism-lite agenda and his ability to perpetuate his rapidly fading image of post-political bipartisanship.

Moreover, the expiration date for his convenient line--"we inherited this crisis"--has already passed, or as they say at used car dealerships, once you're off the lot, all noises, pings, and knocks are yours.  The Congressional Budget Office now says the Obama-generated deficits will be $2.3 trillion higher than his crack economists predicted.

All of this is slowly seeping into the public's political conscience, and the drip, drip, drip--that familiar sound of leaking political capital--will become progressively more difficult for this neophyte executive to confront.  Already, many moderate Democrats are wondering aloud what happened to their opportunity to advance the agenda of fiscal restraint, to reach across the aisle to like-minded Republicans who share their concern that we're drowning our children in red ink while awakening the giant known as inflation.

With the predictable exception of those on the hard left, Americans are already asking themselves, is Obama guilty of false competence or poor judgment?  Perhaps it's both, with a tincture of arrogance.

It's both wise and healthy to periodically gauge one's intellectual adversaries, and a review of the collective outrage from the left in the wake of former vice president Dick Cheney's interview on CNN, proves that it's also instructive.  One can argue whether it's smart this early in President Obama's tenure to criticize him, but beyond the substantive arguments for or against warrantless wiretaps or 'alternative' interrogation techniques, it's the hyperactive response by liberals that makes it enjoyable political theater.

Note the tenor of the quotes in the CNN article, in particular, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.), who argues that the Bush administration's policies undercut "what is actually the source of America's greatness--our principles," and, hewing closely to the victimology of war, states that "The cost of this war [Iraq] is something that I strong believe has far, far hurt us."

So, the Sestaks of the world deliberately--read, willfully--overlook the fact that 26 million Iraqis now have the chance, for the first time in many decades, to establish a rudimentary form of democracy in their nation, which was so brutally savaged.  Moreover, with Iran close to realizing its dream of a nuclear device, wouldn't the Middle East be a far more complicated, that is, dangerous, place were Saddam Hussein still threatening his neighbors?

Furthermore, Sestak and his ilk ignore the fact that you couldn't find a living soul in late September 2001 who believed the U.S. wouldn't suffer another terrorist attack on its soil, yet in the ensuing eight years, it never happened.

When it comes to the history and operational evolution of warrantless wiretaps, you'll find few on the left who have done the heavy lifting.  I covered this extensively in a January post titled A Defense of the NSA's Warrantless Wiretap Program, and although it's far from exhaustive, it's more than you'll garner from most major news sources, in print or on-line.  But the left seems much less concerned about advancing the most effective strategy to safeguard America than amassing political capital to advance its electoral goals.

The issue of enemy combatants--a term the Obama administration has indicated it will no longer use--is another topic the left has failed to come to terms with.  As I argued in my January post on the subject, titled The Gitmo Conundrum, merely signaling your desire to close the prison, something we can agree would be ideal, is hardly tantamount to realizing the goal.  Mr. Obama seems to be on the early edge of the learning curve where vexing problems, from the Middle East to Gitmo, are much easier to summarily resolve when campaigning than when governing.

To complete our tour we'll turn to the breezy leftist commentary writer, Joan Walsh, whose piece in Salon.com, begins with a Cheney broadside, shocked that he had the temerity to "pounce on a new administration so quickly."  Perhaps she forgets the unflattering way in which former President Clinton, from the outset routinely excoriated the Bush administration, but such details might confuse the matter. 

What's truly at issue is that when liberals mount arguments against conservatives, they--and the media--characterize it as 'thoughtful criticism' or 'evolved thinking.'  But, when we reverse the field, to quote White House press secretary Gibbs, it's the "Republican cabal," or, as Walsh calls them the "GOP hatchet men."  She and many other arch liberals are so deeply invested in their self-perpetuating hatred of Cheney and Bush that they want them charged with war crimes.

As is always the case, history will sort all of this out, since wisdom seems to expand exponentially with the passage of time, which provides the perspective we need to reach candid, rather than politicized conclusions.  In the meantime, regardless of how vehemently the left tries to discredit the Bush administration, most Americans are thankful they've been kept safe the past eight years, and, that Iraq is a fledgling bastion of democracy.

Those who follow the contorted evolution of our cultural development know that one of the many by-products of the modern age is the endangered status of personal responsibility.  Indeed, our collective infatuation with victimhood leads many among us to conclusions that would be laughable were they not so hostile to the common good.  From the social-psychologizing of criminal behavior, which convinces many that the real victims of crime are the perpetrators, to the more generalized but nonetheless vexing tendency to provide an itemization of excuses for personal foibles, ours is a culture in wholesale denial of traditional notions of individual accountability.

Having just completed a trial that stemmed from a casualty claim against our corporation, I can now personally attest to the remarkable elasticity of the human tendency to rationalize improvident behavior.  Some years ago, a client of ours allegedly tripped on a weather mat placed outside our office and suffered injuries which resulted in expensive medical treatment.  Just before the two-year statute of limitations was to expire, our corporation was notified of her lawsuit.  After two more years of legal wrangling, this week it finally went to trial.

As the corporate representative, I was involved in every step of the process, both during the pre-trial phase and the court proceedings.  What would have struck the average person most is how it was allowed to get to court in the first place.  The most salient fact in the case is that the hallway outside our office where the mat was placed was, according to our lease, unambiguously under the contractual control of our landlord, not our company.  Moreover, the plaintiff had a history of personal injury lawsuits as a result of 'slip and fall' incidents.  But, in the highly evolved labyrinth of the modern legal sensibility, the judge ruled that there was a dispute concerning the facts, a determination wrought from thin air.  So, to trial we went.

Anyone who has been through something like this understands how a disconcerting sense of implied guilt quickly develops at the hands of a skilled plaintiff's attorney.  Without so much as a scintilla of evidence, he was able to craft a line of questioning that reversed the guilt or innocence equation such that I was in the awkward position of trying to acquit myself (and my corporation) from a position of presumed guilt--it's the "Have you stopped beating your wife" syndrome. 

The jury selection process confirmed what I knew about the Colorado Springs area, which is that it might be one of the last bastions where individual responsibility thrives, something of an anachronistic relic of an era now consigned to the cultural history books.  Upon questioning of the juror candidates by the attorneys it was obvious that few had any respect for personal injury lawsuits.

However, during the trial it was impossible to judge how the jury was responding to witness testimony, so as it concluded, the attorneys representing the corporation were quite guarded about the outcome.  But, after only half an hour we were notified they had reached a verdict, which, our lead attorney informed me meant we would be exonerated or found completely guilty.  Fortunately, it was the former.

But, as always, I tried to solve the conundrum that lurked beneath the surface, which is why people today seem so entitled to recompense for injuries that are demonstrably the result of their own behavior?  Along with so many other virtues that have been cavalierly discarded in the last fifty years, the one called personal honesty, which demands that we candidly reconcile our accounting of the facts with those of the real world, has been abused beyond recognition.

The result is that we've long since passed the threshold where ethical integrity reflexively forces people to admit guilt, or, at least their complicity in events that have adversely impacted them.  Rather, they sheepishly agree with the internal voices of intellectual hubris that insist upon their innocence, which are faithfully echoed by a culture unmoored from its moral footings.  In this case, it was a brace of personal injury attorneys, trained in the art of deflecting responsibility, thoroughly convinced as they are, that their client has every legal--and apparently moral--right to exploit the system for her own gain, the truth be damned.

How about a respite from the rigors of national politics?  Although the subject of homelessness may not compete with the economic debacle our nation faces, it's one that provides a moral window into our collective soul. 

As you've read over the years, not all people who live on the streets are there due to economic circumstances.  Some of them are there by choice and they prefer to live that way.  This doesn't address that group, but rather those who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to support themselves or their families, or who suffer from some kind of mental illness which prevents them from making sound decisions.

As is the case nationally, here in Colorado Springs a discussion periodically rises to the civic surface concerning what to do with "these people."  Although such community conversations typically include the programs that various charities sponsor to assist those in need, they also highlight the concerns of retailers who have an understandable economic interest in not having the streets inundated by "street people."

However, the manner in which the conversation is conducted, including the way people define the problem and the those involved, is a revealing exercise that tells us much about ourselves as a society.

I wrote a letter to the editor in response to an article in the Gazette, our local paper, that was published today.  Scroll down to "Give help, not criticism."

If you glance below the headlines of our major newspapers as well as the mainstream media's news programs, you can't help but notice the tsunami of discontent that's sweeping the country.  Although the original cause is our economic crisis, its proximate cause is President Obama's response to it, which, as the moderate economist Robert Samuelson writes in Newsweek, amounts to willful dishonesty.

You might recall how effervescent the Democrats were when Obama crashed onto the national political scene.  This was a transformational politician, one who will lift us from our complacency and create bipartisanship for the greater good of America.  Although it was lofty rhetoric, the kind that captures the hearts of both idealists and the naive, many Americans saw through Obama's words and focused instead on his record and stated agenda--something the media meticulously avoided.

Although Samuelson provides a bevy of information concerning the various ways in which Obama is being deceitful, two stand out prominently. 

If Obama were "responsible," he would conduct a candid conversation about the role of government.  Who deserves support and why?  How big can government grow before higher taxes and deficits harm economic growth?

But you'll never hear him raise that issue because it would stimulate the real discussion we should be having and that is how government spending has never improved the economy.  Indeed, the higher the percent of GDP consumed by government spending, the poorer our economy performs. 

More fundamentally, with the exception of wartime, Americans have tended to be cautious about a major role for government because they correctly understand that, on balance, government does few things well.  Moreover, when it takes on an out-sized presence in our lives, we must feed it with more of our hard-earned cash and it typically leads to a reduction in individual freedoms.

Samuelson's second crucial point deals with national security:

National security has long been government's first job.  In his budget, defense spending drops from 20 percent of the total in 2008 to 14 percent in 2016, the smallest share since the 1930s.  The decline presumes a much safer world.

We should all be concerned about Obama's implicit judgment that the world will be a much safer place.  We needn't itemize the threats, but they would certainly include an incendiary Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and global terrorism from radical Islamists, not to mention an unstable Afghanistan.  How exactly does this translate into a six percent reduction in defense spending?

Samuelson finishes his piece by noting what's been obvious to all but liberals and their foot soldiers in the media:

During the campaign, Obama said he would change Washington's petty partisanship; he also advocated a highly partisan agenda.  Both claims could not be true.  The media barely noticed; the same obliviousness persists.

Being the moderate he is, he generously asserts that the media "barely noticed" the disparity between Obama's political Hallmark cards and his actual agenda; a more candid characterization is that the media has been and is guilty of a dereliction of its duties.  It's only because the Internet provides millions of Americans with a measure of truth that we're starting to see a groundswell of opposition, and it's by no means just from Republicans.

Obama hasn't even reached his hundredth day and he's already laid the groundwork for protracting our economic recovery as well as installing a vast set of new federal obligations which will haunt the nation for decades.

It certainly is 'change,' but it's the kind that's hazardous to our civic and economic health.

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his seminal work Democracy in America, modern versions of ancient regime change are different in both genus and character.  Historically, nations and city-states appeared on the horizon, found their economic footing, defended their borders, and if they were measured in their acquisition of land, maintained their power until a greater one confronted them.

It was typically a bloody affair, featuring a series of battles over several years, such as the Persians and the Greeks, first at Marathon, then Thermopylae, or, later, the Peloponessian Wars, and later still, the Punic Wars.  In modern times, as de Tocqueville noted, the demise of great regimes will result from the improvident imposition of statist bureaucracies, which, over many years, impose an insidious regimen that features centralized power with a myriad tentacles that work their way into every aspect of our lives.

Its goal is the slow strangulation of freedom and accountability, and the commensurate dependence on government, to replace the capitalist oxygen in our free market system with a noxious mix of government fumes.  Writing in the Times of London, Tim Reid outlines the political contours of President Obama's gambit, which, for the attentive, have become apparent over the past several weeks.  As he astutely states:

Its goal is not just to rescue the economy. It is to crush conservatism, end the age of anti-tax, anti-regulation policies that have been the guiding philosophies of US governance for a generation, and usher in a fresh “epoch”, as his aides call it, of New Deal-Great Society wealth redistribution and central intervention that were repudiated by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.

Beneath that dark vision is a deep and cynical disdain for our system of free markets and the feckless endorsement of socialism, first in principle, then, in practice.  Obama's exploitation of our flawed health care system is merely one of several proxies that he's pressing into service for a greater cause.  Indeed, there's no evidence whatsoever that our health care system is a primary cause of our economic distress, yet he stood before reporters yesterday and stated that every thirty seconds a family goes into foreclosure as a result of health care problems.  Fact checkers quickly disputed his numbers, after which a White House aid had to sheepishly admit he was using obsolete data.

For those not in the thrall of Obama-mania, his two-track agenda is conspicuously apparent.  The goal is to nationalize as many facets of our society as possible, to make Americans permanently dependent upon government, according to the liberal code. 

As our financial markets continue to slide, erasing more wealth and retirement funds for more Americans, many on the left deny that President Obama's rescue plan is to blame.  They argue that his predecessor is the culprit and that Obama and congressional Democrats are merely trying to correct the underlying problems.  But their every action belies that fact because nothing is being done to address the banking industry's systemic problems, much less the investment industry's corrupt system which allowed billions of equity to disappear overnight.

Liberals can reassure the lemmings among us that the Dow, NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 will recover, but those indices are the most reliable indicator of faith in the future we know, and they're on a downward trajectory that's killing baby-boomers and retirees alike.

Watch closely in the next few months as Obama continues to push for expanded justifications for government intervention, making permanent hundreds of new programs and running up trillions in deficits.  It's all part of his grand scheme to remake America in the hideous image of the failed socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, where the government makes all our decisions, from cradle to grave.

De Tocqueville was right--in modern times, great nations will die slowly, bled to death by a government with hegemonic designs.  Obama's presidency is just chapter one.

It's easy to understand why the hard left loathes Rush Limbaugh:  He's an unapologetic conservative who performs a daily ritual of eviscerating liberal pieties to the applause of about twenty million listeners.  For the tongue-tied lefties whose radio shows have become the subject of ridicule nationwide for their superb inability to retain an audience, Limbaugh is a galling reflection of their pitiful inability to reach the America outside the bell jar of their nativist liberal thinking.

For a convincing example, we turn to our billboard of reliably liberal ranting, the Huffington Post, and this time it's Bob Cesca who delivers the vitriol.  Bringing the usual blend of colorful caricature and insipid prose to the challenge, he makes up in incandescent rhetoric what he lacks in substance.  He ties every Republican, from Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele to Rep. Mike Pence, former senator Rick Santorum, and former House member Tom Delay, to Limbaugh, branding them with the left's version of the scarlet letter, the "dittohead."

In the mix of this miasma, he provides the predictably incomplete quote by Limbaugh--that he wants President Obama to fail.  Of course, for those lettered in reading comprehension, it's clear that the full quote asserted that if Obama's goal is to impose socialism on America, he hoped he would fail--rather a different characterization, n'est-ce pas?  But, details, not unlike truth in debate, is yet another casualty of the modern liberal sensibility, and Cesca doesn't fail to live up to the full measure of leftist palaver.

Among other charges that suffer from a lack of evidence, Cesca calls Limbaugh a racist, while lampooning his Oxycontin addiction, and dragging out every ad hominen attack to pack his column with hyperbole and sneering sarcasm, all to compensate for his conspicuous lack of substance.

In truth, although some Republicans aren't comfortable with Mr. Limbaugh's brand of conservatism and on-air caustic attacks on liberalism, the reason he resonates with millions of listeners is the very reason liberal radio has been such an abject failure:  Limbaugh's politics are predicated on a respect for our Constitution, on the vision of American exceptionalism championed by our Founding Fathers, and on the virtues of fiscal restraint and individual responsibility--all of which the left mocks, dismisses, and satirizes as stuffy, authoritarian, and obsolete.

Of course, in the heat of the national debate Rush can become overwrought, but it's not because he hates liberals, it's because he sees the slow degradation of America's traditional values and its impact on the Republic far more clearly than most of us, and it horrifies him. 

It's because Limbaugh is so successful in chronicling liberalism's flaws and foibles that the left--including Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff--feel compelled to engage him in political battle.  But, they don't have a microphone for three hours a day with a legion of faithful American listeners and cable network news shows that cover the daily skirmishes, where Mr. Limbaugh so ably decimates his enemies.

So, we're glad to step back and watch Cesca and his lefties excoriate Rush, as it's the kind of comedy we've come to expect from a party whose threadbare ideas--from income redistribution and an anemic military to support for the slaughter of innocent unborns and disarming law-abiding citizens to make them better targets for criminals--are tirelessly recycled in a desperate attempt to purchase political power. 

It's quite a show.

Moderates, not unlike independents, seem to exist below the political radar, taking their modest sustenance wherever they can find it, while claiming that extremists on both sides are to blame for the lack of progress in addressing the critical issues facing the nation.  Besides the luxury of remaining unscathed by avoiding political warfare, moderates and independents enjoy the benefit of providing lectures to the rest of us concerning the virtues of restraint and tolerance.

David Brooks, the well known moderate who writes for the New York Times, makes a credible case for the most palatable kind of moderation, the kind that's clearly right-of-center.  Indeed, although he lumps "moderate liberals" in with his ilk, the former are a rare breed indeed.  As you work your way through his editorial, you become progressively convinced of the sober-mindedness of his thinking.  Brooks favors "investments in education and energy innovation," and "health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs."  He also laments the fact that the Obama administration has raised "the cost of charitable giving.  It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention."

Those and his pledge to "block the excesses of unchecked liberalism" reflect valiant virtues in this battle for the identity and soul of America.  In a very pragmatic sense, they reflect principles that are less moderate and more traditional in their pedigree.  Indeed, he mentions the "Hamiltonian tradition that believes in limited but energetic government," apparently unmindful of the fact that conservatives in the vein of Buckley et al do see a vital, but limited role for government.

Moderates, especially those who understand the need for efficient and effective government, would find allies in conservatives who endorse those values but who have become political cynics under recent presidential and Congressional Republican leadership.  Add to their miseries the newly minted President Obama and his legion of liberals in congress and you have a recipe for utter despair among conservatives.

But Mr. Brooks errs when he implies that America in recent years has failed to provide equally for the "small minority," because one of the hidden victories of the Bush years is that the tax burden on lower-income earners was substantially reduced.  Moreover, an irony missed by most is that the burdens he insists should be "shared broadly" were actually shouldered by the so-called rich.  The top 1 percent of income earners pay 38 percent of all federal income taxes; the top 5 percent pay 55 percent, while the bottom 50 percent pay just 4.6 percent.  If he wants to "broaden" that obligation, I'm sure many in the top 5 percent would gladly oblige.

What's perhaps most surprising is that Brooks seems genuinely shocked that President Obama isn't governing as a moderate.  If you examine his rhetoric during the campaign you'll find a wealth of lofty, post-partisanship sentiment, but everything he uttered in terms of policy was hard to the left. 

Brooks finishes his paean to moderation with recommendations his foot soldiers must make to correct Obama's "uber-partisan budget."  But to call it an uphill climb is a generous gloss because the pent up demand of liberalism, fueled by an arch-liberal media, is creating a blind conflagration of indiscriminate spending, and there's simply no evidence of an end in sight.  That's because no one in the Obama administration seems to understand that you can't drown a recession in cash--it's never worked and it never will.

So, although moderates can join conservatives in calling for fiscal sanity, we must not forget the military adage tested numerous times on the battlefield:  Implement the best strategy, but plan for the worse outcome.