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Roger Simon reports that next week, the RNC will approve a resolution rebranding the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party." RNC Chairman Michael Steele opposes the move, but is reportedly powerless to stop it:
Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”Last month, a Rasmussen poll found that about equal numbers of Americans under 30 identify with socialism (33 percent) and capitalism (37 percent) -- and this was after a year in which the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees did everything they could to use the word as a slur. The strategy, it seemed, backfired, not least because of Barack Obama's intense popularity and anger at the excesses of Wall Street. As Harold Meyerson wrote:
The young may now disdain Wall Street -- but what do they know of socialism, past and present? Who even speaks of socialism in America today? The answer, of course, is the demagogic right. According to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and their ilk, Obama is taking America down the Socialist Road. ... the talkmeisters of the right have linked a doctrine that never commanded much support in America to a president whose approval rating hovers around 60 percent and much higher than that among the young.Rush and his boys are doing what Gene Debs and his comrades never really could. In tandem with Wall Street, they are building socialism in America.--Dana Goldstein