Word: The collapse of liberalism

Scott McLarty - Thomas Frank's book, "Listen, Liberal," reminds us that President Clinton didn't take the US in a different direction after the Reagan-Bush years. Instead, he fulfilled the Reagan revolution and enacted GOP proposals that the GOP couldn't have on its own. The five "longstanding Republican objectives" that Clinton accomplished were "NAFTA, the Crime Bill of 1994, welfare reform, the deregulation of banks and telecoms, and the balanced budget." Clinton might also have privatized Social Security if his negotiations with Newt Gingrich hadn't been interrupted by the Lewinsky scandal.

This should remind us that Obama's biggest accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, was fundamentally a Republican piece of legislation. The individual mandate, requiring the public to purchase health insurance from private companies, was introduced by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and was widely endorsed by Repubs until Obama & Dems grabbed the idea in 2009.