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« Hulu Misses the Point of Hulu | Main | And somewhere, somehow, they should have worked in the line "Ooh la la Badoon" » So the answer is "No."Matthew Yglesias asks us to all to get along: There's an interesting debate under way as to whether or not Democrats have "gotten more liberal" over the past 10-15 years that I think is hard to understand without first taking as background the basic long-term fiscal problem facing the United States. If so, then the "more liberal/more conservative" framework needs to be dropped. Years ago, we made some commitments. Now those commitments have gotten more expensive. So we can have an honest debate about whether or not we should back ourselves out of those commitments or stick to them. But Republicans aren't approaching this debate from that perspective; they're saying that Obama is the most liberal president ever and he's bankrupting our country with new government spending. And that's not true*. So when Democrats react to those (false) claims by stating (correctly, but arguably hyperbolic-ally) that Republicans want to shred the social safety net, i think it's an understandable response. *The ACA is the one new program that Obama and the Democrats have added, and everyone with a calculator actually agrees that it's a modest cost-saving measure, not an additional commitment. If there are facts to present to debate that point, i'm fine with that too. But all arguments against the ACA that i've seen conflate long term medical cost growth with the ACA. By fnord12 | May 3, 2012, 11:47 AM | Liberal Outrage |