Liberal Writer: Obama is a RINO

Needless to say, this piece from liberal Ezra Klein is getting much mockery from conservative pundits:

America is mired in three wars. The past decade was the hottest on record. Unemployment remains stuck near 9 percent, and there’s a small, albeit real, possibility that the U.S. government will default on its debt. So what’s dominating the news? A reality-television star who can’t persuade anyone that his hair is real is alleging that the president of the United States was born in Kenya.

Perhaps this is just the logical endpoint of two years spent arguing over what Barack Obama is — or isn’t. Muslim. Socialist. Marxist. Anti-colonialist. Racial healer. We’ve obsessed over every answer except the right one: President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican of the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he’s facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.

In other words, Obama can't just be an incompetent liberal Democrat socialist, he must be an evil Republican in drag.  And all those "good ideas" the GOP has abandoned were nothing more than liberal policies embraced by RINOs who wanted to get invited to all the best Washington dinner parties.  They were never conservative Republican principles.

The GOP leadership of the early 90's (pre-Newt), especially in the House, were a bunch of guys who had been perennial losers for 40 years.  They'd gotten so used to being in the minority it didn't bother them anymore.  Thank goodness most of those people are gone and the few dinosaurs that are left are being weeded out.