PERSPECTIVES ON THE FEDERAL BUDGET : Guts, Injustice and a Blow to Bubba : A Congress prepares to vote on the federal deficit-reduction and taxation package, some excerpts from commentary, pro and con: : Goodby Liberalism

Conservatives are cast down and rising in revolt because the capital-gains rate will not be cut. (That cut is the only grand passion of a President enjoying stratospheric approval ratings. So much for the imperial Presidency.)

But conservatives have this consolation: The conservative aim has been to scrub America clean of the last trace of liberalism, and this deficit-reduction deal does it.

This package and its implications should immunize Democrats against the dread charge that they even remember anything about liberalism. But, then, perhaps Republicans have--not difficult, this--outsmarted themselves. The Republican idea is to call opponents liberals. Republicans no longer can do that.