From an April 14 Washington Post op-ed by Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute:

The most extravagant rhetoric has come out of the gathering of Southern Republicans in New Orleans, led by former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who called Obama “the most radical president in American history” and urged his partisan audience to stop Obama's “secular, socialist machine.”

At the same conference, Liz Cheney, the former vice president's daughter who is often mentioned as a possible Senate candidate from Virginia, fiercely attacked Obama's foreign policy as “apologize for America, abandon our allies and appease our enemies.” And last week the ubiquitous Sarah Palin said of the arms-control treaty Obama signed with Russia, "No administration in America's history would, I think, ever have considered such a step," likening it to a kid telling others in a playground fight, “Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate.”

On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of administering “statist-assisted suicide.” Talk show host Michael Savage called Obama's health-care plan “socialized medicine” and described the nuclear treaty as “insane.” These are not isolated comments; the terms “radical,” “socialist” and even “totalitarian” are bandied about frequently by Obama opponents, including congressional and other GOP leaders.

To one outside the partisan and ideological wars, charges of radicalism, socialism, retreat and surrender are, frankly, bizarre. The Democrats' health-reform plan includes no public option and relies on managed competition through exchanges set up much like those for federal employees. The individual mandate in the plan sprang from a Heritage Foundation idea that was endorsed years ago by a range of conservatives and provided the backbone of the Massachusetts plan that was crafted and, until recently, heartily defended by Mitt Romney. It would be fair to describe the new act as Romneycare crossed with the managed-competition bill proposed in 1994 by Republican Sens. John Chafee, David Durenberger, Charles Grassley and Bob Dole -- in other words, as a moderate Republican plan. Among its supporters is Durenberger, no one's idea of a radical socialist.