OPPORTUNISM AND AMNESIA
Except when it comes to grudges, D.C. seems to have a short memory. But New Democrats appear to be getting away with a brazen, if trivial, piece of historical revisionism. First, Al From called Gov. George W. Bush a New Democrat "impostor" for using "opportunity" and "responsibility" as his buzzwords. Al Gore said the same thing in his speech before a Democratic Leadership Council conference last week. This is all normal partisan rhetoric. But reporters should know better than to write, as E. J. Dionne does in today's Washington Post column, that "the mantras of compassionate conservatism--'opportunity' and 'responsibility'--were stolen outright from Clinton-style Democrats."

Sheep dip. Both of these were Republican themes long before the Democrats picked them up. Has everyone forgotten that the New Democrats' left-wing critics accused them precisely of being pale imitations of the Republicans for just that reason? That conservative intellectuals were upholding "equality of opportunity" against the "equality of result" they accused liberals of seeking? The caucus Newt Gingrich founded in the '80s was called the Conservative Opportunity Society, after all.