Yes' is a far more potent word than 'no' in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side, one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.

Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.

Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come.

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.

Leadership is a dynamic tension between where a politician thinks his country must go and where his voters want it to go.

You cannot cover the 50 million new people Obama seeks to cover without more doctors and nurses. But the administration and even the Blue Dogs in the House have proposed nothing to add to the supply of medical services even as they plan vastly to increase the demand by covering new people.

More and more, the Democrats are not merely inconsistent, wrong and/or misguided - they are the worst of all possible things you can be in Washington: irrelevant.