Here's the title of Howard Rich's post at American Spectator.
Barack Obama: Socialist or Nouveau Fascist?
Rich argues that Socialism isn't quite right about Obama's policies, as he does let many who have done well keep their spoils. So it's fascism. But the fascism label, Rich concedes, "isn't perfect". That's why he calls it Nouveau Fascism. You see… when the term doesn't work, just call it a new version of that!
Rich is not an ignoramus, as I suspect that he knows better – and that he knows what he's doing.
So I hereby invent the term "nouveauramous."
Aaron: Yes, the hedge-strategy is very useful. So one could be a cryptomoron, or a quasidoofus. Or we could use the old "there's a sense in which… he's not got a clue." Notice that the qualifier for Rich's hedge is buried on the second page. Doing that is equivalent to just saying 'fascist'. He just just do that, as Jonah Goldberg's already busted that taboo.
Obama couldn't possibly be a social democrat, could he?
There seems to be one ingredient missing in all these comparisons to Mussolini and Pol Pot: totalitarian despotism. Executive privilege is getting out of control, but for now we still have representative democratic rule to some extent until Citizen's United completely ruins that by introducing a form of true oligarchic rule. But Obama is actually opposed to Citizen's United, so there's that.