Are Democrats and Obama Socialist?

NY Times:

Conservatives might be seeking a spiritual leader, organizing principle and fresh identity, but they at least seem to have settled on a favorite rhetorical ogre: socialism.

As in, Democrats are intent on forcing socialism on the “U.S.S.A” (as the bumper sticker says, under the words “Comrade Obama”).

It seems that “socialist” has supplanted “liberal” as the go-to slur among much of a conservative world confronting a one-two-three punch of bank bailouts, budget blowouts and stimulus bills. Right-leaning bloggers and talk radio hosts are wearing out the brickbat. Senate and House Republicans have been tripping over their podiums to invoke it. The S-bomb has become as surefire a red-meat line at conservative gatherings as “Clinton” was in the 1990s and “Pelosi” is today.

“Earlier this week, we heard the world’s best salesman of socialism address the nation,” Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said on Friday, referring, naturally, to a certain socialist in chief.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas decried the creation of “socialist republics” in the United States. “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff,” Mr. Huckabee said, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference here over the weekend, a kind of Woodstock for young conservatives.

“Socialism is something new for us to hit Obama over the head with,” said Joshua Bolin of Augusta, Ga., who founded a Web site, “Reagan.org,” which he calls a conservative analog to the liberal MoveOn.org.

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I think the modern Democrat party and the liberals who control it are not socialist. Socialist control the means of production of goods and services through ownership. Today's liberals are much worse. They control the means of production through regulations and taxes while bearing no responsibility for the results that flows from their control freak policies.

Thus liberals don't want to own energy companies, but they want to destroy them through onerous taxes and regulations. They want to control the means of production without have to bear a cost. They devise confiscatory taxes to, in Obama's words, bankrupt coal fired electrical production. This is fascism, not socialism. The green movement is an excuse for control freak policies on every aspect of the economy.

They are going to dramatically lower the standard of living of everyone in this country as they seize ever greater control. They are the anti freedom party from speech to how we power our economy.