Tony Blankley explained how recently:
"Overly broad charges against him are dangerous. Republicans will make a mistake if they take to calling him "too liberal for America." He is too liberal, but they need to make the charge specific point by specific point...The Republicans must systematically make a hundred tightly argued, irrefutable critiques of very specific examples of Obama's policy being wrong for at least 60 percent of America. America may be going through one of our episodic style shifts. In 1932, FDR's conversational style trumped Hoover's old oratory. In 1960, JFK's coolness and wit caught the emerging post-World War II sophistication of our culture. Twenty years later America, tired of sophisticated cynicism, was ready to return to Reagan's old-fashioned sentiments and values. Obama is tapping into a curious alchemy of youthful idealism tempered by Internet edginess. Republicans must communicate their values and policies through that prism, or they will not communicate at all."
Yes--we're not talking here about abandoning principle. Obama is too far to the left, and Republicans and conservatives must communicate it. But not the old, clunky way, by shouting
"liberal" at him. That won't work in these changing times. Reagan understood that, and hence learned to package conservatism in his warm, sunny, optimistic manner. So must we learn to change today, too.
