George Will calls the new Democrat-led Congress more conservative than the one it replaces.

Hmm, is he right?

Consider first that Democrats are the coalition of the nuanced, which the media takes as license for two flip-flopping memes:

• The Democrats are following the country in its inexorable move to the right
• The Democrats are at least as bad as the Republicans as polarizing wackos, with a weary country wishing for a political middle-ground.

Both of these stories continue to be more appealing to the MSM than the one the American voter figured out after six years of outrageous malfeasance and a needless war that's spiraling way the fuck out of control:

• One party has a lot of reasonable statesmen and -women; the other is full of incompetent, nest-feathering hypocrites.

Even Bush seems to understand this.

Okay, but is Will right? Are the new donkeys just DINOs?

Carville seems content to think so, as he props up Jesus' failed senatorial candidate, Harold Ford — fan of football, girls, and Bush's torture bill.

But listen to Senator-elect Jim Webb (D-VA), and you'll hear a man with conviction about economic fairness, perhaps the most definitive liberal cause.

Yeah, but is Will right?

Actually, I'd say he is... if conservatism means fiscal common sense and a return to the values of our forefathers.

Who isn't more conservative than the party that hotwired the American economy, drove it into the ground, and stumbled away from the wreck, with its arm around the quivering neck of a buff, young page?

With Hastert's announcement that he will not seek a leadership position in the new Congress, House Republicans will have no choice but to reconsider how their behavior in recent years — particularly their ravenous appetite for pork — is related to having had leadership that was light on the ballast of ideas.

So, yes, it seems evident that progressivism is the new conservatism.

Can we expect the George Willses to keep that in mind as Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats' quasi-majority in the Senate try to fix what the GOP has done to our country? Not. Likely.