another great quote

from Obama's remarks at the Democratic convention: "Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?"

Kos got it right when he said: "The reason Obama has put the Right into a quandry is that he exposed, in one masterful performance, every caricature the Right has of liberalism."

The GOoPers have nothing to hold together their disparate coalition of libertarians, anti-tax anti-government folks, corporate suits, and religious believers than blind hatred of the "librul" bogeyman. Conservatism is currently the biggest form of identity politics around, and it is predicated on fear and division.

What is conservative about a one year $420,000,000,000 deficit? What is conservative about destroying centuries of church-state separation? What is conservative about corporate welfare for Halliburton? What is conservative about a state that can imprison you without recourse to legal counsel or a hearing before a judge?

Nothing.

That is why fear and loathing of "librulz" is the glue of dubya's "conservatism": a caricature designed to fool people into thinking they have no choice.

Well they do. And they should examine the two choices objectively and wisely. Who performs and who doesn't? If they simply ask the same question Ron Reagan asked, they will find the answer: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"