Goose stepping with gusto.

James Taranto in today's Wall Street Journal focuses on Fascist Fairy Tales told by disappointed Obama groupies Democratic tactician Drew Westen and Times Magazine's Joe Klein who wish fervently that Obama had followed the script written by Mussolini.  They wanted Obama to

...single out "villains" including "Wall Street gamblers," "conservative extremists" and ... jewish bloodsuckers.

I made up the part about the Jews, but that's how it's done when you get ready to follow your Fuhrer.

Taranto: 

The Cult of Obama imagined a Good Obama, who was going to inspire hope and transcend America's divisions. Westen and Klein now long for Bad Obama, who would exacerbate those divisions in order to vanquish the "bad guys."

Although Good Obama sounds far more attractive than the actual Obama, the idealized Bad Obama is an incipient fascist. When Klein complains that Obama "has never gone to war on behalf of the American people," he doesn't mean it literally. He uses nationalistic and martial rhetoric to urge a campaign of vilification against putative domestic enemies. Westen regrets that Obama did not resolve to rule in a quasi-authoritarian fashion, making clear to Republicans that "this would not be a power-sharing arrangement."

The next time I hear the calls for bipartisanship from the Left, let this be a reminder that in their hearts they really applauded the Democrat steamroller that gave us ObamaCare and trillion dollar deficits.  That the call for bipartisanship is the call to accept the blame for what goes wrong when the Liberal dream turns into a nightmare.  It's the call for Republicans to vote for tax increases and deficit spending so that later on the Democrats can blame the Republicans for everything that went wrong. 

The little Fascist in the Liberal spirit is exhibited by the wish that these people have of a "strong man" who will lead the country in the way it must go.

Westen and Klein, and other like-minded progressives, have revealed that they dream of a strongman uniting the "masses." If that requires vilifying selected groups of Americans, they don't mind and may even view it as a plus.

Even if he wanted to, Barack Obama could not be a strongman, in part because he a weak man and in part because America's constitution is a strong charter of liberty. But if Obama had the means and inclination to impose a dictatorship, is there any doubt that Drew Westen and Joe Klein, at least at the outset, would goose-step with gusto?

When the Democrats are not blaming S&P for the market's melt-down, they're calling the Tea Party terrorists and bombers.  When you need a scapegoat, pretty much anyone will do.