There's some striking contrasts between the Republican convention in Tampa last week and the Democratic convention in Charlotte this week.

At the Republican convention, Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who wants to have a balanced budget not now, but in 30 years,  got a standing ovation from the Republican delegates when he vowed to defend and strengthen Medicare, a Democratic Party "Great Society" program (and one of the biggest cost-drivers in the bloated Federal budget).  The Republicans (with the notable exception of a one-line crack by Clint Eastwood) failed to mention how we're going to extricate ourselves from the Afghanistan quagmire; and Condoleezza Rice's speech was full of the "universal desire for liberty and freedom" pap that has turned the U.S. military into Third World missionaries.

How, exactly, are today's Republicans any different from the Democratic Party of Lyndon Johnson circa 1965?

By contrast, in Charlotte, the Democratic candidate has admitted to heavy cocaine and marijuana use, wrote that he specifically sought out Marxist, radical black, and feminist professors, was personally mentored by Communist Frank Marshall Davis, and is a personal friend of a notorious Weather Underground member.  He will be nominated by a sexually libertine former president who "loathed the military" and was impeached after having what was, until fairly recently, defined by many state laws as "deviate sexual intercourse" in the Oval Office with a 20-something girl -- almost as if it were the "Summer of Love" and he was a hippie who would "do it" with "some chick" just about anywhere. 

And Democrats remain proud of the lecherous Bill Clinton -- whereas George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, like Johnson in '68, were notably absent from their party's gathering. (No wonder the Democrats will prominently feature birth control activist Sandra Fluke at the convention -- if she gets within groping distance of Clinton, she'll need it).

It's 1968 all over again -- and once again the Goldwater/Tea Party /small-government conservative faction is faction is missing. When the Republicans give a "standing O" for a Great Society program, you don't have a choice between "liberal" and "conservative" any more. You have a choice between Great Society socialism and radical New Left socialism.

If you're a conservative, you might as well be voting for Lyndon Johnson this year. That's as good as it gets. At least you can take comfort in the fact that you're not voting for Che, the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and the promiscuous hippie chicks. And you can take comfort that they called Johnson a "fascist," too.