What’s the Hillary Special at Popeye’s? Two large thighs, two small breasts and a left wing. If that doesn’t take you back, brother, you were never there. Yes, the grizzled Secretary of State now enamored of Assad Jr as a “reformer” as well as the spontaneous human combustion of anonymous goatherds in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, too!) was once far more true to the politics of her loopy commencement address at Wellesley that received a Stalin-esque ovation from that crowd lasting seven minutes. The crowning glory of her political career (before she was elected to shit) was to be Hillarycare; a massive overhaul and expansion of Medicare/Medicaid that would inundate medical delivery systems as we knew them in the barbaric days of 1993, leaving that segment of our economy socialized in all but name. Sound familiar? But Hillary became the Centrist once a certain Senator from Illinois maneuvered into that sliver of atmosphere existing between her Left and the outright commies. Hillary had sought total control through the doctors: the practice of medicine outside the embrace of Hillarycare was to be a criminal offense. Obama stole a march by making criminals out of any patients escaping, however fitfully, the smothering grasp of Obamacare. Of such distinctions are great careers made.

But no one called Hillary an extremist. At least no one you have ever heard of. Likewise Barack, whatever his actions, is always far from extreme. The argument for this, if you can call it that, always comes from those who are for socializing whatever moves as long as it is not the industry they draw their own lunch money from. Obamacare, and Hillarycare before it, were conceived as centrist solutions to a doom not impending but happening before our eyes. Medical costs were spiraling up and since these were largely paid through government accounts, this was bad. Anyone wondering whether the existence of these government programs was in any way responsible for present calamities, well son, now you have found your extremists.

We knew this term only ever cuts one way long before Chuck Shumer was dumb enough to read his Progressive Caucus scripted stage directions over a live conference call. The young Hillary Rodham knew the sting of it when, as young Goldwater Girl, her man was derided by the Democrats as well as his Rockefeller Republican competitors so thoroughly that he came up with the famous formulation that Extremism, in the Defense of Liberty is no Vice. That didn’t sell too well and yesterday’s Barry took it on the chin in a shellacking not duplicated until Mondale got his.

Goldwater’s actual history and policies were of little consequence. This front man in the civil rights struggle, a fellow with explicitly accepting attitudes to homosexuals was branded a dangerous Rightwing loon spoiling for a nuke fight with the Russkies. Of course it wasn’t this that doomed him. If so it would have doomed Kennedy. What got Goldwater a fat target on his back were his daft assertions that Johnson’s Great Society wasn’t all that great, in fact it amounted to a Ponzi scheme so stark that it would bankrupt the nation. What a nut.

His heirs are the nuts of today, singing the same song of doom. Repent! scream their sandwich boards. Don’t Tread On Me, warn their baseball caps. The foundation is the same: spending money we do not have is a bad idea. But the ranks of the Taxed Enough Already caucus have swelled, mostly because more people are realizing the scale and immediacy of the problems and that the source of the swimming pools of cash in Washington is their own collective pockets. But sheer numbers are no defense to allegations of extremism for those on the Right. This is somewhat befuddling since the concepts of extremism, centrism and the existence of “wings” are poll driven concoctions. Foundationally, what makes someone an extremist is that their opinions languish down in the single-digits or teens of public opinion surveys. So by strict definitions TEA partiers are not extreme in the least. Their views on spending and taxation are routinely near 50% levels among likely voters no matter how adversely the questions are phrased. Some of their hobby-horses draw support into the seventies. Even more astonishing to those who encourage spending without limit is that simple like/dislike and support/oppose numbers on the TEA brand draw 30% support among Democrats! Indeed, outside the major parties themselves Brand TEA enjoys the largest casual affiliation of any activist group. This while it is just a couple years old and, of course, has been the target of our national engines of villification in both parties since its first breath.

So where are the Leftwing Extremists? Do they exist? Even self-described marxists are not so identified. From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs…. what could be extreme about that? Certainly this sentiment can command some significant support. And so it does though diluted and disguised in whatever language is in vogue. Socialism as American patriotism? Sure, why not? Again Shumer speaks for simple common sense when he declares that paying your taxes, at WHATEVER rate, is the highest form of patriotism. Yesterday I had heard it was dissent! And years before that, I thought taxation was somewhat controversial. I think we might have had a little war over it.

But what do I know? After all, I am the extremist’s extremist. All those whacky complaints on the signboards? Yours Truly has been complaining about them for years. I was an extremist before extremism was cool. That old rascal W, he was a Rightwing extremist, wasn’t he? If you are a Leftwing extremist of course everyone looks far to your Right but from my perspective (and with historical analysis) Brother Bush was something like the second coming of Nixon. Wha? Well THAT guy was the extremiest Rightwing extremist ever to sit on the Black Throne, no? No. Not unless you consider price controls, Affirmative Action and yet further expansion of the Great Society to be Randian ideals. The quarter-assed socialism of the Compassionate Conservative and his cousins (philosophical, not blood) has only a moderately better fiscal foundation than the half-assed socialism we call Liberalism. That minor improvement is constantly employed as a club by the nameless caucus, the one that is truly and totally bipartisan because it is  united by its bottomless hunger for your money.

These guys are NEVER extreme, by definition. TARP, that scheme to purchase “troubled assets” was not extreme though it poured $800b of straight cash we didn’t have into that obese, starving shyster that was and is the financial industry. Bush, Obama and McCain, too were all on board with that. Nothing extreme there, pure centrism. And when another $800b was needed to keep unemployment from reaching the brutal rate of 8%? Likewise, unextreme. Stimulus the First was at least as necessary as TARP. So lets have it. Only extremists voted against that and fortunately they were in a minority. The auto-bailouts? Ah, these were less extreme still, championed by a coalition of Democrat and Republican while opposed by a wan troop of nobodies representing those who would ultimately pay the bill.

With glories like this on the ledger of the centrist, what is an extremist to do? In large measure, we sit and wait. Ron Paul has become no less the extremist over his long career and other than PR moves it seems unlikely that he has become any less anti-semetic or inclined to paranoiac fantasy yet the Paulian position on monetary policy, overseas entanglements and the proper role of government have climbed steadily from flirtation with single-digits to electoral competitiveness. Factoring in the concept of political momentum his batty, fringe presumptions threaten to determine the contests of the near future at the least. Indeed, it was scant months ago that the idea of cutting federal spending in any regard was roundly considered a quaint lunacy that would destroy…. yes, destroy our national economy. Don’t you recall? Now, as the ledgers spill their red ink into the streets, even the President declares that we can’t spend more than we take in! To understand the full power of Paul’s triumph here one needs a full breath.

So now at least the SAYING that we should cut our spending to our revenues is finally in fashion. The DOING it is another story all together. The President denounces the Ryan plan as an extremity yet even this supposedly vicious shredding of the “social safety net” does not get us half to solvency. The Congressional Progressive Caucus comes out with their Peoples’ Budget which spikes taxes and benefits while claiming to cut borrowing, it is strangled in its crib but no one dares call it “extreme”; not least because the CPC is 30% of the Democrats; at parity with the TEA party. And indeed their budget is not extreme in the sense of political viability. It is a continuation… an ACCELERATION on the path we have trod for eighty years. One might even argue, and they do, that this would be implicitly conservative, since it “conserves” what we have long been doing.

So don’t bruise too easily from this handy, vapid insult “extremist”. It was a poll-tested wonder for decades but its day is done. Why is it insulting to be labeled Extremist when the times themselves are so extreme? There is extreme inflation. Extreme unemployment. Extreme uncertainty and extreme fiscal damage today. It will be more extreme tomorrow. And more extreme next week. By Labor Day we will all be extremists except of course those who profit from the status quo. This isn’t you,  partner. Not without extreme good luck.

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