“Liberal” Positions

29Jun08

I saw TPM highlight this video where Mitt Romney calls nuclear non-proliferation a “liberal” position.

Not to defend Mitt Romney exactly, but I think on a couple of levels that’s correct. What Mitt Romney meant was that there aren’t Liberals that oppose non-proliferation, therefore Obama hadn’t showed a willingness to piss off his base. True enough I guess, although the question was about bipartisanship, not willingness to piss off liberals.

On an even more basic level nuclear non-proliferation is something liberals discuss and care about much more then Conservatives. Basically non-proliferation only comes up when Conservatives need a pretext to start dropping bombs. Other then Richard Lugar Conservatives just aren’t known to write about non-bombing related nuclear non-proliferation issues.

Where this way of looking at the issue comes to an end is that nuclear non-proliferation is that non-proliferation is really obviously a goal worthy of our attention and the U.S. government’s resources. So obviously that I doubt it’s really going to be that hard to talk Conservatives to into supporting it. Indeed Indiana Republican Richard Lugar has done more on this issue then any other person.

This dynamic often becomes the basic dichotomy whenever Liberal issues starting succeeding; their status of liberal issues becomes murky. It’s starting to happen on global warming. Republicans didn’t even bother to complain about global warming science during the Warner-Lieberman debate last month. Conservatives magazines have switched from ridiculing global warming reform efforts, to talking up nuclear power as the solution to global warming.

Expect a whole plethora of issues to start losing their distinctive liberalness over the next decade.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Global Warming, John Warner, Mitt Romney, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Richard Lugar