Pun Salad

• At Phi Beta Cons, Carol Iannone:

  Obama, the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history, actually addressed the American people as a whole, and when he evoked the language of class, it was to speak of the middle class. And while Obama spoke of his victory as the triumph of American principles, McCain spent most of his concession speech rehearsing American's sins. What an irony for Obama to win with what should have been a Republican approach, but it shows how utterly the party lost its way in recent years. The good news is that now they will be forced to rethink and rebuild.

• At the WSJ, Scott Rasmussen:

  Barack Obama won the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts to just about everyone, and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong performance in the presidential debates.

  Does this sound familiar? It should. Mr. Obama followed the approach that worked for Ronald Reagan. His victory confirmed that voters still embrace the guiding beliefs of the Reagan era.

So that could be good news: there's little indication that the country has moved "leftward" in any important sense.

Bad news: there's no indication that the GOP is going to learn that lesson anytime soon.

Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said House Democrats will continue to abide by their strict budget rules.

“We are committed to paygo,” Pelosi said at a lunch with reporters. “I would like to make it the law of the land.”

Paygo, or pay-as-you-go, budget rules require Congress to offset any new spending or tax cuts with spending reductions or additional revenues. Democrats reinstated the rules when they took control of the House and Senate this year.

As Congress gears up to pass another spending "stimulus" bill, there's one political silver lining: Democrats are being forced to abandon the pretense of fiscal conservatism known as "pay as you go" budgeting.

Late last week the leader of the House Blue Dog Coalition, Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, announced that with Barack Obama about to enter the White House, "I'm not sure the old rules are relevant anymore." Why not? Because, Mr. Cooper said, "It would be unfair to the new President to put him in a budget straitjacket."