Legal Commentary

A Primer On New "Progressive" "Non-Triangulation"

By Big Tent Democrat

If the president has already effectively given Republicans what they wanted on energy, what will he get in return? A Hill staffer I know emails with an alternative look at the same dynamic, suggesting President Obama is playing a game we've seen before.:

Obama preempts the other side's most resonant arguments, which forces them to come up with more and more extreme claims in order to differentiate themselves. In the end, he occupies the reasonable middle ground and his opponents are Palinized. [. . . T]he policy is a tailored, measured version of what the Republicans have urged [. . .] Republicans are sort of forced to twist and parse, and even to oppose things they have long supported, just because the Administration hasn't gone far enough.

[MORE . . .]

[B]y announcing the drilling policy without seeking to extract concessions, the Administration makes clear that it is their policy and they are the centrist/flexible/pragmatic ones -- making it harder for Republicans to argue that they accomplished this or that they forced Obama to do it. [...]

(Emphasis supplied.) All kidding aside, you can agree or disagree with the policy or the politics on this, but you can not honestly say that this is not, to a freaking T, the triangulation Third Way approach long derided by progressives when Bill Clinton did it. It is a carbon copy -- change "off shore drilling" for "welfare reform" and it is 1995 all over again.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).