Just a week or so after fellow neo-con Kathleen Parker goes full-on meta over Obama's "chnge", neocon columnist Mona Charen finds a four year solace in the same picks, but unlike Parker she takes some massive digs at the left on her way out of the piece...

Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell.

Such reticence has not afflicted everyone on the right, though. Here's Max Boot, conservative editorialist, author, and military historian: "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain..." Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that the Obama administration was "off to a good start." And New York Times columnist David Brooks has acknowledged that he is "tremendously impressed."

If I were a left-winger, I'd be tearing out my hair about now.

She goes on to make the picks look completely conservative (they are more Village-like than conservative):

If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right. Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the President-elect used the term "defeat our enemies"?

And, on the way out she take a huge dig at Hillary Clinton, specifically, (what good columnist forget to the do this, lol) by taking some of her words out of context:

As for Hillary Clinton, well, she is no Jeane Kirkpatrick. While it's true that she declined to apologize for her vote in favor of the Iraq war, she did everything but. It was only last year that she told Gen. Petraeus that his report on progress in Iraq "require(ed) a willing suspension of disbelief." She opposed the surge of troops in Iraq but then — this is chutzpah! — attempted to take credit for its success. On Meet the Press in January 2008 she said "...The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Sen. Obama, Sen. Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along."

And then after she calms back down, you can almost hear her sighing with relief when she says:

And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish.

So, who was Barack Obama meant for and packaged for, again? When he has set aflame the cockles of folks like Mona Charen, Kathleen Parker, George Will, Karl Rove, and the list of neocons goes on and on, unfortunately, well, forgive me for being skeptical.