Anything left of the John Birch society is a liberal to the Republicans.

as i've said elsewhere, i'm vacillating between "so what" and "tough shit."

I completely agree. They didn't need to exploit this and by conjuring up a suggestion of a new concern of sorts.

The notable liberals that will have Obama's ear is newsworthy though, given recent concerns expressed from the left.

The Post must be trying to drum up business.

That Roger Clegg is "disturbed" by notable liberals with Obama's ear on key issues of domestic policy is predictable and inconsequential.

Actually, I disagree. It is profoundly gratifying to watch Roger Clegg and other prominent conservatives twist like a corpse in the gallows. Conservative bastards should just suck. On. This.

"makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given, and what range of choices he'll be given"

Clegg assumes Obama's presidential decisions will be like Bush Jr.'s in that his advisors will present the only options to choose from. What a limited imagination.

What? Huh? Weren't we just hearing that liberals were mad that Obama's nominees were too centrist? Frankly, it's probably a good sign that both sides aren't 100% happy.

Further thoughts, FWIW:
http://bleakonomy.blogspot.com/2009/01/um-its-called-winning.html

How appropriate - Roberta Achtenberg is advising the incoming Obama administration, while Carole Migden is given a sinecure on the Waste Management board in California.

"Though Obama is more moderate, that makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given."

Really, Obama is more moderate? Weren't these yahoos screaming that he is a socialist 3 months ago?

"I'm inclined to agree, but I don't think the piece is completely without merit. The Post doesn't mention it, but the noteworthy aspect of concerns on the right about the liberals on Obama's team is that it offers a counter-weight to the opposite criticisms the transition office has heard fairly often -- that Obama has snubbed the left and failed to offer progressives any positions of significance."

That would be true, if it weren't also true that the people expressing these concerns were always going to say this, regardless of who Obama's choices are.

Shorter - Conservative Republicans are not the go-to guys for a reality-based judgement on what defines 'far-left'.

"That notable liberals have Obama's ear on key issues of domestic policy strikes me as more interesting."

If true, I agree. However I wouldn't put much stock in Roger Clegg's definition of "notable liberal".....

Given the utter and absolute failure of conservative ideology, I fail to understand why liberal is a perjorative term.

I don't know. To people like Roger Clegg, I'm guessing Susan Collins is too liberal. His opinion is irrelevant and silly, and isn't a counter-weight to anything.

Oh dear, the baby's dropped his pacifier.

Why the hell the Post wasted ink this WATB is beyond me.

"That notable liberals have Obama's ear on key issues of domestic policy strikes me as more interesting."

It strikes me this man has never heard of OpenLeft.com, or David Sirota.

CONSERVATIVES STILL DON'T LIKE LIBERALS---and I still think conservatives are best when roasted over a koa-wood fire, and served with an apple in their mouths. The poi and pineapple are optional....

Conservatives still don't have a clue that they lost this election and one of the results of losing is that they don't get to call the shots.

Actually, I'd say that idealogues, both liberal and conservative, lost this election. Mr. Obama wants government to work again. Conservatives had eight years under Mr. Bush and all they did was prove that governing driven by ideology rather than pragmatism is an abject failure for all. Besides, after Bush, there's nothing left to conserve. It's all been destoryed. It all has to be rebuilt.

Um, Mr. Clegg? Sir? You guys aren't in charge anymore. Your reign of terror is over and you don't get to set the rules or the agenda. The grownups are in charge again and your people can just sit back and sob while we fix what you've broken.

Love, Curmudgeon

Gosh, I can't even THINK of the last time "liberals" were actually in power. How the heck would ANYONE know what the repercussions of liberal rule would be so how can anyone really fear it?

I'm with mellowjohn, but go a bit farther, who gives a fuck what these assholes think??

They've led this country down a path of destruction and now they want to have a say, screw them!

Republicans should be happy -- Obama has gone from palling around with terrorists before the election to palling around with liberals and democrats.

I guess the fact that Obama has appointed Republican Ray LaHood as Transportation secretary and Robert Gates at Defense Secretary means he now pals around with Republicans.

Next thing you know Obama will be palling around with independents and moderates.

Steve Benen wrote: "... the Post giving this 800+ words seems a little unnecessary."

The role of the Washington Post and the rest of the corporate-owned, so-called "mainstream" mass media is to work in close collaboration with the corporate-owned, overtly partisan Republican right-wing extremist media to propagandize the American people in furtherance of the corporate oligarchy's ruthless and rapacious class warfare against everyone else.

In this case, that means undermining a populist liberal Democratic president even before he takes office, whether by smearing him with false insinuations of corruption, or devoting 800 words to fake, phony, bought-and-paid-for corporate shill "conservatives" screeching about "the far left" Obamanistas.

The fact is, having defined the Clinton/Gore/DLC wing of the Democratic party as being part of the extreme left wing of American politics, the Republicans are intent on making the same charges stick to Obama. All you are going to hear from that corner, for the next four years, is what a radical Obama is and how far out of the mainstream of American Politics his appointees are. It wouldn't matter if he yanked Hillary from Secretary of State and replaced her with Rick Warren...Warren would then become the national RINO posterboy and be denounced as a one may sleeper cell for radical secular progressives.

It is all a definitional game with them. If they can define the positions they win.

Too bad Republicans now live in fear of the liberal.
After what we've been through the past eight miserable, psychosis-inducing years!?
With a smile of satisfaction, may I quote from Matt Taibbi in the Nov. 27th edition of Rolling Stone Magazine:

"It sounds strange to say, but the election season may have done to the word "Republican" what 1972 did for the word "liberal": turned it into a poisonous sobriquet that no politician with bipartisan aspirations will ever again welcome.
The Republicans didn't just break the party---they left it smashed into space dust. They weren't just beaten; the very idea of Rebublican conservatism was massively rejected in virtually every state wheren large chunks of the population do not believe in the literal existence of a horned devil, and even in some that do."

"...(McCain) exited the campaign on his knees, his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals having spent the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm....

"....We pulled off an amazing thing here...this dumbed-down, degraded election process has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom."
"We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire decline.
"For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe our sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right."

The right spent the general election campaign characterizing Obama as a "socialist" or even a "Marxist."

And what do you know, a majority of Americans still voted for him.

I think that gives Obama a mandate to be as liberal as he wants. The right made sure the people knew that in Obama they were voting for a man of the left.

"...it offers a counter-weight to the opposite criticisms the transition office has heard fairly often -- that Obama has snubbed the left and failed to offer progressives any positions of significance."

Sorry, I don't listen to Conservatives and Republicans telling me how to be a liberal or how to define liberalism. Thus their complaints that the Obama Transition Team is overrun by liberals does not an argument make.

Remember, these are the loons who claimed first that Obama was the most liberal Senator (like he out liberals Ted Kennedy!) and finally, in the last days of the campaign, that Obama was the most liberal candidate ever to run for the Presidency. They were wrong then, they are wrong now. I don't build arguments based on error.

On the other hand, I also don't believe the Obama is actually snubbing the left. But then, I'm not a moonbat.

"The right spent the general election campaign characterizing Obama as a "socialist" or even a "Marxist." - Nancy Irving

When a conservative tells you that when Obama is inagurated, America will be a Socialist country, tell him that is true, because George Walker Bush made it one.

Hopefully Obama and his 'liberal' gang can Just Fix It and in the process once again restore regulated capitalism to this country, rather than the system of privitized gain/socialized lose we have now.

The best part is what makes one of these "notable liberals" so offensively leftist is that he's... gay. For Republicans, just being gay is way too much.