Liberal

WASHINGTON - Bit by bit, the face of Michael Dukakis morphed on TV screens into the visage of John Kerry, part of a spooky Republican ad that pegged Kerry as a "tax-and-spend" liberal. The year was 1990, and Kerry was campaigning for his second Senate term. Since then, critics have continued to tag him with the label of reckless liberalism, and still do as he closes in on the Democratic presidential nomination. So it's perhaps not surprising that Kerry has spent two decades walking a fine line: between being a loyal liberal and pursuing a more independent path in defiance of his party.

WASHINGTON -- When she launched her first campaign against Rep. Albert R. Wynn two years ago, Donna Edwards was a liberal activist little known outside progressive circles. Wynn, a veteran of more than two decades in Annapolis and Washington, raised more than twice as much money as Edwards and enjoyed the support of the Maryland political establishment. But Edwards began a drumbeat of criticism against Wynn's votes on bankruptcy, the estate tax and the war in Iraq - and came within a few thousand votes of beating him in the Democratic primary election for the 4th Congressional District.

MINNEAPOLIS -- In this campaign season, when panicky candidates everywhere are trying to squeeze themselves into the center, Republicans are taunting Sen. Paul Wellstone. He's beyond liberal, they say. He's "ultraliberal." No, wait: He's "embarrassingly liberal," way too liberal for Minnesota.Too liberal for Minnesota? The home of liberalism's patron saint, Hubert H. Humphrey, and his acolyte Walter Mondale?Thirty-four Senate seats are being contested this year. In most of the close races, the candidates are either trying to position themselves in the political center or moderate Democratic candidates face challenges from conservative Republicans.

They're baaaa-aaaaaack.Call it "Attack of the Killer Liberals." Call it "The Amazing, Colossal 50-Foot Sensitive Man." Call it "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms to the Left." But two new movies are as much formed by their aggressive political values as they are by their entertainment values.In fact, so liberal are "The American President" and "Nick of Time" that it's difficult not to see them as backlash films, the first out of the box in reaction to the Republican victories of 1994 and that ultra-conservative group of freshman members of Congress who may even out-right the storied Newt.

Maryland's top Republican leaders say Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett's support for affirmative action may seem surprising, but it is a mainstream GOP position, not his alone. Republicans favor affirmative action, though not quotas, to help minorities get into the nation's mainstream, they say. But so does President Clinton, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and the Democratic Party, they say. So, if both sides agree, what's the national argument over affirmative action about? "It's how you define your terms.

In February 1954, Dwight Eisenhower was one year into his presidency, the first by a Republican in 20 years. He said in a Lincoln Day speech to his supporters: "... be conservative, and don't be afraid to use the word." For 20 years "conservative" had been an epithet directed at the mostly Republican politicians and businessmen who were blamed for the Great Depression, then opposed the Democrats' New Deal efforts to protect victims of ruthless special interests and laissez faire federal government.

NO MOVEMENT LASTS forever, but how do we know when the end has come? Consider the case of the neoconservatives, the network of liberal and leftist intellectuals who were disillusioned by the convulsions of the 1960s - or "mugged by reality," in the famous expression - and drifted steadily rightward, emerging in the 1980s as an informal brain trust for the Reagan administration. The tension between liberal sentiments and conservative analysis gave the neoconservative movement its distinctive flavor.

ROCKVILLE -- A few days after endorsing U.S. Rep. Constance A. Morella in a Montgomery County congressional race, officers of a national handgun control group were confronted by a small but passionate collection of its local members. How, the members asked in a meeting and e-mails, could the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence back a Republican -- even a liberal one -- in a year in which Democrats, more aligned with gun control than the GOP, have a chance to gain a majority in the House of Representatives?

Allan Starkey didn't go to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday to have his mind changed about George W. Bush or the war in Iraq. He wasn't disappointed in the least. "I know the film is as biased as all the critics say it is," Starkey, a professor at Towson University, said a few minutes before the opening of the incendiary new film at 11 a.m. at the Charles Theatre. "As far as I'm concerned, Michael Moore is the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, and I'm grateful he's there."

IT'S HARD to think of Richard M. Nixon, the disgraced 37th president, as a liberal. But except for his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon oversaw the greatest expansion of the federal government since 1945. Thirty-two years ago this month, Nixon signed into law a civil rights act that extended voting rights protection to minorities living in the North, Latinos, and 18-year-olds. This anniversary provides a unique opportunity to re-examine liberalism - Nixon style. The Voting Rights Act of 1970 was a tip of the iceberg.