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It's a classic case of be careful what you wish for. President Barack Obama wanted to end the baby boomer-era culture wars -- and he's done it.
But along the way, Obama has sparked an even more visceral values debate about whether he's moving the country toward socialism and over the very definition of what it means to be American.
At a moment that finds the right energized and seemingly ascendant, the battles over morality-based cultural issues such as gay rights, abortion and illegal drugs that did so much to drive the conservative movement and dominated the political conversation for more than 30 years have abated, giving way not just to broad economic anxiety but to a new set of emotionally charged issues.
Much of the right -- including the noisy and influential tea party movement -- sees greater and more immediate danger from this administration and Congress on issues related to the role of government and the very meaning of America than from the old "social issues." For while Obama has avoided single-issue fights on issues such as gays in the military and federal funding of abortions -- angering parts of his base, in the process -- he has, in the minds of conservatives, pushed a comprehensive agenda, and that is far more threatening.
"His worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we've had," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, who attributes conservative fear not just to Obama's effort to expand the federal government but to the president's overall governing philosophy.
"He grew up more as a globalist than an American," Huckabee said. "To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation."
Pete Wehner, a former top official in the George W. Bush administration and a social conservative thinker, described the resistance to Obama as "beyond politics."
"What we're having here are debates about first principles," Wehner said. "A lot of people think he's trying to transform the country in a liberal direction in the way that Ronald Reagan did in a conservative direction. This is not the normal push and pull of politics. It gets down to the purpose and meaning of America."
In the view of National Review editor Rich Lowry, that sense on the right of a fundamental shift has helped turn the role of government into a cultural issue, filling some of the emotional space formerly occupied by the traditional hot-button issues.
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