David Gergen unmasks Ronald Reagan as a socialist!

Okay, well actually, he points out the absurdity of the McCain/Palin claims that Obama is one. It comes after a discussion of the absurdity of the continuing back and forth within the McCain-Palin campaign about who's responsible for the clothing flap. In the last minute or so, Gergen employs a redutio ad absurdum to lampoon the socialist argument dominating the GOP effort the past several days: if Obama's plan to give tax credits to working Americans who owe no income taxes (but pay payroll taxes) makes him a socialist, then so was Reagan, who signed the Earned Income Tax Credit into law.

I think that what this pints to is the declining usefulness of the longstanding Republican tactic of labeling Democrats as liberals. It had a long, successful run as a way of marking Democrats as unsuitable for high office, but there are signs taht it won't work anymore. First, Americans have grown accustomed to GOP assumptions about the economy, tax cuts, and the role of government. It's what many voters now have grown up with, which makes the supposed dangers of liberalism seem more theoretical. On top of that, most voters have noticed that the Republicans were in control most of the past eight years, and are starting to remember again that government serves necessary purposes that go beyond national defense and law enforcement. Katrina was a stark reminder of that, and the current financial and economic crisis is another. Add to that all of the incompetence manifested by various agencies of the federal government during the Bush years, and I think Americans may be ripe for rejecting the doctrine espoused by Ronald Reagan: government isn't the solution, it's the problem. (And Gergen's example also illustrates that, even for Reagan, this a rhetorical truth more than one that he governed by. And while I'm on the subject, the federal government grew significantly during Reagan's presidency, just as it has during Dubya's -- in that regard, McCain is wrong in suggesting that the growth under Bush was a betrayal of Reaganism, since both presidents talked about shrinking the government while increasing it, mostly in areas related to national security.)
This clip is courtesy of Crooks and Liars.