The right wing surrenders

From the Washington Post:

Sen. Rick Santorum wanted to talk.

His purpose, he said over breakfast earlier this week in the Senate dining room, was to "tell the other side of the story" about his record, which his foes use to cast him as -- these are his words -- "a mean-spirited, hard-right country club Republican."

You forgot bigoted, hateful, sleazy, duplicitous, smarmy and ignorant, asshole.

Santorum has been running behind for months in his reelection struggle against the popular Democratic state treasurer, Robert Casey Jr. If Santorum doesn't change his image, he loses.[...]

Santorum is not alone. All over the country, Republicans are engaged in a massive effort at rebranding, reframing and, in some cases, wholesale retreat from past positions. The surest sign that the nation is in the middle of an ideological transition is that Republicans don't want to sound like -- well, Republicans.[...]

The current reaction is not simply to [...] Bush's low poll numbers. It's also a response to the failure of conservative policies and to the declining appeal of conservative rhetoric. Conservatives are trying to save themselves by offering progressive-sounding criticisms of the status quo, much as liberals offered ersatz conservative critiques two decades ago.

If Rick Santorum wants you to look at his record in a way that makes him a paladin for the poor and if Dennis Hastert wants you to know that he's suspicious of the oil companies, the political weather is changing. When one side starts making the other side's argument, you don't need to be a pollster to know which belief system is in the ascendancy.

I guess those "out-of-ideas", "disorganized", "wimpy" Democrats must be doing a lot better than the media gives us credit for – considering that the other side is trying to pretend they're us.