It occurred to me when reading what Bob Dole said about Ronald Reagan and George H Bush that they couldn't be nominated by today's Republican Party as their Presidential nominee that the Democrats have taken the conservative space and the Republicans have shifted to the looney space.

When historians wrote that Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party to the center (the so-called Reagan Democrats) I can't help but think they will write about Obama that he moved the Reid/Pelosi crowd to a more conservative bent. The US economy is moving steadily along and the two sectors that collapsed (the housing market in 2007 and the financial sector in 2008) are on sounder footing - capital reserve requirements and housing prices and starts. If the current Republicans were not obstructionists think of where the country would be now.

It's the presence of Obama plus coming to grips with a cultural shift in America as well as a demographic shift (we need to take back our country) have the Republicans in a tizzy. Add to this the technological changes that make the Asian and African worker catch up with the American middle class and the disappearance of middle incomes, and you can see the Republican Party go south.

If 9/11 hadn't happened, George W Bush would have been a successful President. Look what he did in his second term - got rid of Rumsfeld and banished Cheney to his basement. He WAS a compassionate Conservative with strong family ties to the Hispanic race. He was sensible in education and in helping the middle class. He also spent a lot of money on eradicating AIDS and other diseases in Africa. Will we see the pre-9/11 Bush conservative (Jeb and Chris Christie) or the post-9/11 Bush conservative (the Bachman and Palin crowd). Those 2 BTW only wanted to make money (Fox ?News and books and so on) rather than helping America.

As progressive the public Obama has been (gay rights, same sex marriage, etc. he's conservative in his economic and foreign policies. We have more focussed American involvement abroad and a smaller government with a shrinking deficit.