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The most striking thing about the McCain campaign's claim that Obama is a socialist is that they had to thrash through so many other charges before they got around to it. Obama is inexperienced, he's all talk, he's a defeatist, he's an out-of-touch elitist, he's a celebrity. He'll say anything to get elected, he hangs out with a former terrorist. Then finally: Oh, and did we mention he's a socialist?

The time was when that was always the first charge Republicans turned to when someone proposed increasing the role or power of government. The income tax, child labor laws, social security, FDIC, the Civil Rights Act of 1948 -- to Republicans they were all either "socialistic" or "creeping socialism," a phrase coined by the Republican Thomas Dewey in 1939. Democrats found this maddening -- in 1952, Harry Truman called socialism a scare word and said that when a Republican said "Down with socialism!" he really meant "Down with progress!"