John King, Laura Ingraham, Charles Krauthammer, Tom Brokaw, Karl Rove, Ruth Marcus . . . they're all saying that America is still a "center-right" country.
Here's the thing: if that's true, then why didn't America elect the center-right candidate, which describes McCain to a tee???
We get an answer from a chorus of pundits who say, "Well, McCain wasn't conservative enough." So he was — what? To the left of center-right? So where does that put Obama?
This memes simply don't make sense. This election was, above all else, a repudiation of conservative governing, which showed itself in deregulation which lead to an economic crisis, invasions of foreign countries, Katrina non-response, turning a blind eye to global warming, and — perhaps the biggest gripe of all — the ever-increasing gap between the wealthiest in our country and the poorest.
Sure, most people didn't pull the Obama lever thinking, "He's a progressive and so am I." But they pulled the lever thinking that he was offering something different — you know, "change" — and something better. It was a repudiation of what was — and "what was" was called (rightly or wrongly) conservatism.