Krugman is surely right on this:
For those who insist that the center is always the place to be, I have an important piece of information: We already have a centrist president. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan administration, argues that Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.
Mr. Bartlett has a point.
The president, as we’ve seen, was willing, even eager, to strike a budget deal that strongly favored conservative priorities. His health reform was very similar to the reform Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts. Romneycare, in turn, closely followed the outlines of a plan originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. And returning tax rates on high-income Americans to their level during the Roaring Nineties is hardly a socialist proposal.
True, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama is a leftist seeking a government takeover of the economy, but they would, wouldn’t they? The facts, should anyone choose to report them, say otherwise.
As I put it in a recent column for the Sunday Times (paywalled):
I sincerely wish I could be bipartisan on this. I wish I could write a column saying that blame lies on both sides. But I can't. The debt itself is bipartisan, built up over many years (although the republicans have a clear edge in adding to it). But the simple responsibility to pay the debt already incurred is currently only being taken by the Democrats. Today's Republican party in America is so extreme, so doctrinaire and so reckless they stand alone on this question.
The Dish 