They ain’t. William F. Buckley was the arch-type Conservative. The current GOP leadership and followers are an entirely different group who appropriated the “conservative” badge in the same way that “National Socialism” was appropriated by the Austrian paper-hanger in the 1930′s.

Then and now, a convenient and outwardly innocent title is used as a shield to hide the actual intent and rationale of the anti-social rabble that will always be a part of any society.

Are they missing a chromosome or two? Of course they are. And they are only still with us as a result of being part of a species that has learned to side-track the usual Darwinian result of being anti-social. Any other species would have driven them out and into extinction long ago.

If you say he failed as a socialist does that mean you feel that he succeeded because he is a Democrat?

Try to have yourself an nice unconfused day

“I know of democrats and especially those on the far left who are disappointed. Do they hate him? No. In many cases people heard what they wanted to hear. They assumed that he’d end the involvement of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They thought that all American soldiers would be home by now. They thought Obama would raise taxes on the “wealthy” and that he’d have more of an impact on the Bush economy than he has had. They thought he would stop any attempt to erode SS or Medicare or Medicaid. Instead he has said that entitlement programs are on the table. He abandoned the “public option” in favor of the mandate, in an attempt to compromise with the republicans. He walked away from letting the Bush tax cuts expire in a another compromise with the republicans so that he could get an extension to unemployement benefits. Many felt he should have been more confrontational and let the republicans attempt to defend their stands, instead Obama gave them a fig leaf to hide behind.

Many democrats, all across the middle and left, felt that they deserved a president who would fight. A guy who would do battle over the domestic agenda that they had voted for…

“It wasn’t a case of people suddenly deciding that the republcans are correct. It also isn’t the case that your characterization is widely held among people I’ve talked to….finding a handful of people who write blogs or online articles or even people who write for Newsweek that agree with you is not indicative of any hatred of Obama….and certainly not the opinion that he is a clown. “

The problem is that their I’m-on-a-mission-from-God dedication to promoting their views gives them an outsized footprint at the polls and in influencing politicians. What we on the left have to avoid is matching their devotion to dogmatic purity and automatic denial of anything that deviates from their world view.

Yes, they’re an annoyance and often a hindrance to progress. But, natural selection is already taking care of the problem. They eat their own. In the last half dozen years, they’ve driven out John Warner, George Voinovich, Mike Castle and Olympia Snowe. They’re working dilligently to hasten their descent into a third iteration minority.