Bu Bu But Wait, I Thought They Said The Cabinet Was Center-Right

I was wondering how long the Conservatives would keep trying to sell Obama as a Ronald Reagan figure with a center right cabinet. I know it just about killed them to try to paint Obama as sorta kinda one of them. Well I guess with the inauguration fast approaching and with it Obama's progressive agenda, the facade is over and the gloves, predictibly are coming off.

From the Washington Post:

To some staunch conservatives watching President Bush relinquish the reins of power to President-elect Barack Obama, a few too many ardent liberals are now crashing the gates.

Some well-known Democratic activists are advising Obama on how to steer federal agencies, including a few whom conservative Republicans fought hard to keep out of power in the Clinton administration. They include Roberta Achtenberg, a gay activist whose confirmation as an assistant housing secretary was famously held up by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.), and Bill Lann Lee, who was hotly opposed by foes of affirmative action and temporarily blocked from the government's top civil rights job.

Conservatives fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come.

"It is disturbing," said Roger Clegg, a conservative opponent of Lee's appointment who is now watching the Obama advisers at the Justice Department. "The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left. Though Obama is more moderate, that makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given, and what range of choices he'll be given when it comes time to make appointments."

snip

Another nomination battle arose in 1997, when Clinton proposed Lee, a Chinese American civil rights lawyer, to be the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for civil rights. Conservative opponents blocked Lee, a supporter of affirmative action, for a year. Lee, who is now a lawyer in private practice in San Francisco, served in the job as a presidential recess appointment and later won confirmation.

Clegg said he has some fears about a return to racial quotas, in part because Lee and Theodore M. Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, serve on the Obama transition team reviewing civil rights.

But Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor who was blocked for the same job before Lee's nomination, said she thinks the complaints of an ultra-left takeover by Obama advisers and nominees are manufactured hyperbole.

"The Bush administration people were often fighting against the very mission of the agencies they were supposed to be running," she said. "And their advocates were masters at name-calling and finger-pointing. No one involved in this work really thinks Bill Lee is on the radical fringe."

Imagine that, a Democrat who actually appoints liberals to serve in his administration. Who woulda thunk it? LOL Honestly I was surprised that the whole center-right cabinent meme was pushed by the other side for this long. Its actually refreshing to see them taking off their "bipartisan" masks and revealing that they are who we thought they were. Now hopefully can go about the business of building consensus where needed but punching people in the mouth when it isn't.