Far to the right

Some months back, I wrote a column for The Destin Log pointing out that Ronald Reagan would probably be too left-wing to get elected today: His administration treated terrorism as a crime that could be dealt with within the legal system, banned torture and negotiated with our enemies (and as someone who loathed Reagan’s politics, it’s horrifying that he actually looks good to me in comparison to Dubya and the Tea Party candidates).
When someone in the comments began ranting about how left-wing Obama and the Dems are, I pointed out how Washington is actually far to the right of mainstream America. The someone shrieked and protested I was insane, but the facts bear me out.
For several years, we’ve seen solid majorities of Americans in support of withdrawing from Iraq (and we still have several thousand troops there—no withdrawal this) and Afghanistan, investigating torture allegations against our government, ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, offering a much more generous health plan than the one we got and most recently, a slight majority has come out in support of gay marriage (please insert the standard boilerplate about polls not being perfectly reliable).
None of these positions is anywhere close to a majority position in Congress today.
The White House doesn’t support any of them (Obama has been dancing around acting on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but with the same enthusiasm Superman plays with kryptonite).
The supposedly liberal media were dismissing withdrawal from Iraq as a fringe leftist theory months after polls started showing majority support.
Or consider the current push to cut or privatize Social Security. Our national political leaders keep talking about how necessary it is to cut the deficit; the media portray the deficit as the defining political issue of the day and insist that failing to do so by slashing Social Security (as noted here, the only option most pundits considers worth trying) will fuel public outrage to throw out incumbents.
Polls, however, indicate the deficit is barely on the radar for most Americans, and keeping Social Security going without privatizing it is the majority preference.
The next time anyone rants about the liberal media and how the ultra-liberal elites in Congress are imposing their will on a right-of-center nation, keep the facts in mind.