The "Socialist" Smear

Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute may be getting the David Frum treatment soon if Rethug donors see his op/ed in today's Kaplan Daily. In it, he dissects and then dismisses all of the crackpot epithets being hurled against President Obama. Specifically calling out the likes of Oxycontin Rush Limpballs, Winky You Betcha, Michael "Wiener" Savage, and Newt "Poot" Gingrich, Ornstein reviews the Obama record on foreign and domestic issues and pronounces him "a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center." (We somewhat sadly concur with that assessment.)

Poot, in particular, is quoted at the recent confab of Confederate Rethugs as having called Obama "the most radical president in American history." Ornstein asks,

"The most radical president in American history? Does Newt Gingrich, a PhD in history, really believe that [expletive]?"