retropolitics:

Frank Llewellyn | CBS News

“Socialism” is now an active part of the Republican lexicon, among the litany of routine charges to be trotted out whenever they cannot come up with a substantive critique of policy initiatives they oppose. Beginning with a steady drumbeat from the far-right blogosphere during last year’s Democratic primary campaign, Republicans have attacked health care reform and modest progressive tax reform proposals as somehow “un-American,” “European,” and, God-forbid, “socialist!”
…
Republicans and their media allies never really define what they mean by socialism. To some, it is an expansion in government spending (although many capitalist nations funnel more of their GDP through the public sector than the U.S. does). This past February, Fox TV host Glen Beck informed me on the air that Canada must be a socialist country because it had a universal health care system. That would be news to Canada’s socialist New Democratic Party, which has occasionally held power at the provincial level but has never won a federal election.

Whatever their definition of socialism is, the term is gaining currency among some Republicans as a form of blanket condemnation of the President and Democratic reform proposals. Just yesterday, RNC Chair Michael Steele declared definitively that Obama’s health plan represented socialism, even though the Obama proposals most closely resemble the universal health insurance scheme of Germany - last we knew, an avowedly capitalist nation.

More…