28 years ago today?

(..... ) won the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts to just about everyone, and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong performance in the presidential debates.

If we’re playing fill-in the blank here you get credit for entering either Barack Obama's or Ronald Reagan’s name. And this again, bolsters our contention that the gleeful dirt-shoveling of many in Big Media on the graves of Reagan ideology and conservatism is not only premature but bordering on intellectual dishonesty as there is scant evidence this country wants to make any sharp veer to the left.

Indeed, the most liberal member of the Senate made a middle-class tax cut his closing argument and as Williiam Kristol points out in his article here, that though the nation gave a big victory to the Democrats, polling indicated no real perceptible shift in conservative/liberal/moderate ideological identification. (Recall, also, Bill Clinton campaigned on a (undelivered) tax cutting platform in ’92)

In fact, as this article from Scott Rasmussen points out and from which the opening paragraph was pulled, the Reagan “brand” remains very much a popular one with the voting electorate which polling also suggests is not keen on the bailout plans.

So what does all this mean? It means that the G.O.P. will be getting its just desserts here for a while for abandoning many core conservative principles. It also means the voting public will be watching the new administration very carefully with respect to policy and legislation, especially regarding the bailouts and this much-ballyhooed tax cut.

Bucketfulls of Bush-era policies like the executive ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research is going out the window as soon as Obama takes office but that is the price Republicans will pay for their backsliding.

It would appear that the silver-lining of this economy is that it may prove to be an effective “containment” for any big government shenanigans in which Obama may want to engage. The ‘Kos kiddies will take extreme umbrage with that development but…. that will be the President's problem, not ours.

H/T: Blue Crab Blvd.