May 21, 2010 8:51AM # Who’s Crying Socialist? By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Dana Milbank of the *Washington Post* [complains](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051904487.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns) that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell “held a news conference in the hallway outside the Senate and all but called Obama a socialist.” And what exactly did McConnell say? Milbank goes on: > “They’re running banks, insurance companies, car companies, taking over the student loan business, taking over health care, now, apparently doing to the financial services industry what they did to the health-care industry, doubling the national debt in five years, tripling it in 10,” he railed. “They’ve got people over at the FCC trying to take over the Internet. This is a massive government overreach.” So McConnell didn’t call anybody a socialist. He just listed President Obama’s policies — accurately, it seems to me. And Milbank listened to that list and said “hey, you’re calling him a socialist!” We’ve been [cautious](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10158) here at Cato about calling anybody a socialist. But if Milbank thinks a description of Obama’s policies amounts to “all but calling him a socialist,” I’ll just let his analysis stand. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).