When a man writes: “The difference between the two men was that my dad believed everything he said all the way to the core of his being, while Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats use speeches to mask what they really believe.” this man is actually calling Obama and Democrats liars and hypocrites–a statement not worthy of my respect nor of any other response.

Michael Reagan's attacks are possibly legitimate regarding other liberal Democrats in this country, but they are a misstep and a case of overreach (not merely hyperbole) here. It reminds me of the occasional true blunder we hear from others. I was on the road this past weekend between Michigan and Iowa and in Indiana, traffic was stopped dead for a couple of hours on I-80 on Friday, and at times I had cycled through the AM and FM stations to try to listen to news and other related programming, often about the inauguration, naturally. On the Limbaugh show I heard another example of Limbaugh's occasional misstep. Limbaugh is accurate about so much, but occasionally he is far from realistic. He has occasionally hyped the Obama extremist threat that most of us don't see at all. (Hillary Clinton's extremism was the cause of so much of the 1994 election results, but none of us feared an extremist threat from her this year. She, Obama, and others have learned their lesson from the 1990s.) Certainly Obama can potentially try taking things more leftward than the mainstream, but the 1990s lesson about this likely has tempered any such desires or ambitions now. (So has the economy!)

Moreover, I believe Reagan and others should not confuse Obama's circumstantial career details with what may be attempted now, necessarily. For example, Obama has been associated with Chicago and with community activists, which have been notorious (and this was a legitimate liability to identify during Obama's campaign). But remember that Obama is a creature of dinosaur Blue Nation territory at its oldest. Of course you're going to find him associated in Chicago with relicts from the 1960s, the “urban America” junk, not just radical liabilties like Ayers. In the Upstate New York hard-core Blue Nation city I lived in for two years, there was still an Urban League office there. That doesn't mean everyone nowadays is still demanding action on, or “discovering” the “need” for action on, the 1960s “urban problem,” the reaction to which silliness is similar in a way to the reaction by Reagan here to what he perceives, or misperceives in Obama.

Obama is from decrepit dinosaur lands, but he is trying to lead and develop a contemporary Democratic Party. Don't forget that its future lies where the people are going and the populations and economies will again sometime be growing: the Sunbelt (turning Red Nation bluer).

P.S. I only listened to Limbaugh for a few minutes, incidentally, because he had a guest on whom I have come to dislike substantially — someone who engages in deliberately provocative statements, and wild generalizations, in order to sell her celebrity and her literary products. That's Ann Coulter, of course.