Well, now, this is just really great prose:

My subject, however, is the recurring Democratic complaint—or, more properly, talking point—that the Republican Party has now ‘strayed’ so far to the right that its onetime standard bearers, from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, would not only fail to recognize their political home but would be estranged from it.

This fantasy is nothing new, of course, and in the last election cycle was even said about Ronald Reagan. You might have thought that Reagan was the far right Hollywood dunce who was the cat’s paw of a handful of California millionaires and couldn’t tell the difference between movies and real life, thought ketchup was a vegetable, waged aggressive brinksmanship against a patient Soviet Union, and blamed pollution on trees. But that was the Ronald Reagan of, say, 1983. The Ronald Reagan of 2011 is a principled progressive who raised taxes and protected abortion, and when he wasn’t helping Mikhail Gorbachev dismantle communism was swapping Irish jokes with Tip O’Neill.

Author Philip Terzian goes on to analyze Democratic heroes using the same techniques Democrats use to criticize Republican presidents. The result ain’t pretty, but it sure is clever and entertaining!

Eleventy.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.