BUT I THOUGHT RIGHT-WINGERS WERE THE ONLY TRUE PATRIOTIC AMERICANS

I'm not sure I've chosen a side in this debate:

Barack Obama's top advisers are making a mid-"core" correction in their attacks on Mitt Romney -- with a little nudge from Bill Clinton....

Late last year, as Romney galloped to the right, Obama's messaging team hit on what it assumed would be a durable bumper-sticker attack: Romney, senior advisers David Plouffe and David Axelrod intoned time and again, was a political shape-shifter who lacked any real moral or political "core."

... But Clinton, echoing survey data presented by Obama's own pollster Joel Benenson, quietly argued that the empty-core approach failed to capitalize on what they see as Romney’s greatest vulnerability: An embrace of a brand of tea party conservatism that turns off Hispanics, women and moderate independents.

A more effective strategy, Clinton has told anyone who would listen, would be to focus almost exclusively on Romney’s description of himself as a "severe conservative," to deny him any chance to tack back to the center....

I guess I'm just surprised that we're actually talking about attacking right-wingers for being right-wing as if that might be a successful electoral strategy. As far as I can recall, no one in politics has believed that for forty years. Clinton himself barely ran against the right -- he was more of a triangulator, attacking Sister Souljah in '92 and signing welfare reform and the Defenmse of Marriage Act in '96. Obama essentially ran against Bushism in 2008, but the message seemed to be that it just didn't work for some reason that may or may not have had some vague connection to ideology.

So have we finally arrived at a moment when being right-wing means something other than being a rock-ribber Real American? After decades of destroying the middle class, repeatedly crashing the economy, and setting half the country against the other half, are right-wingers actually going to be criticized for their ideology? That would be a breakthrough....