Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.
There's something about Barack Obama that induces Americans to imagine what they cannot see. The Right envisions a vile socialist, while many on the Left picture an inspired liberal, politically restrained in his first term but now free to pursue his true beliefs.
What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just like I try to be. He's been bridging divisions his whole life.
There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.
Most people today don't feel that Barack Obama is on our side. We sense he's incapable of doing what Roosevelt did, of loving his country so much that he was willing to run great risks in order to advance its cause, to free others from a new Dark Age - and protect our own liberty in the process.
In several short years, Obama has fundamentally shifted the balance away from the individual and toward government, and has altered the national psyche from self-reliance to ever-growing reliance on government.
Many conservatives were openly angry with the Bush administration over enormous government spending and the chaos in Iraq. I don't see as much independent thinking on the left, where President Obama is rarely criticized by his acolytes.
It's not about Obama, it's about the Democrats and their policies that cause consternation on the right.
What seems strange is that Obama elicits such extreme dislike when, in fact, he is an exemplary family man, and his policy positions would have made him a conventional liberal Republican not that long ago.
Obama's personality traits, coupled with his extreme-leftist agenda, make him particularly dangerous to the American ideal and to the preservation of our founding principles, as well as to the liberty and prosperity they guarantee.