Is ‘conservative’ a dirty word, Bill Maher?

Do you sometimes find yourself at odds with a decision by President Obama? Well, Bill Maher says imagine if Obama had lost to warhawk John McCain or wacky tycoon Mitt Romney.

“Believe me, if John McCain was president right now, we’d be at war with about nine different countries, and the EPA building would be a laser tag place, and the National Zoo would be the Dick Cheney Center for Urban Hunting,” Maher said.

And President Romney?

“We can go by what we know Mitt was saying in the campaign. One: He would have let GM fail. Can you imagine what America would be if they had let General Motors fail?

“And I think we would be choking on coal and passing more money to billionaires, if Mitt Romney were president.”

In addition to hosting the political comedy “Real Time” on HBO, Maher’s September stand-up special posted the best ratings of any HBO special of the past five years.

This Friday and Saturday, he brings all new material to the Palms’ Pearl.

I wanted to ask Maher about podcaster Adam Carolla (who says he is getting more conservative), since Carolla said “conservative” has become a pejorative, a dirty word.

“I don’t think most people in America actually understand whether they’re liberal or conservative,” Maher said.

“If you ask them about specific issues, they will generally paint a portrait of themselves as pretty liberal.”

That’s true, if you look at poll numbers on individual topics including formerly controversial ones such as gay marriage and legal marijuana.

And for a few years, there has been a viral-online list of things liberals did to make America better. That list includes:

Passing voting rights for black Americans and for women; universal schooling; child labor laws; the 40-hour workweek and paid vacations (instead of 70-hour workweeks); Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; unemployment and health care benefits; the Family and Medical Leave Act; the Clean Water act; and the G.I. Bill.

Maher said we should remember “conservatives have been on the wrong sides of all those issues.”

“Don’t forget Ronald Reagan said Social Security and Medicare would cause Americans not to be free people anymore,” Maher said. “Which is basically the same argument they made against Obamacare.”

Maher thinks some people self-identify as conservative only because they think it makes them “sound serious.”

“But go down the list of issues and see if you really sound serious,” if you’re a conservative against gay rights, clean air and throwing unemployed families out of their homes and onto the streets, he said.

“So, when people say there’s no difference between the parties, well, I wish there was a bigger difference, but there is a difference.”

Hold on, I can’t interview Maher without asking him about the new wave of legal marijuana, which he calls “the issue I’ve been ahead on for the last 20 years on television.”

“Las Vegas should be the next place open for weed,” Maher said.

“This is the one place in kid-friendly America where adults rule the roost, so why can’t we have legal weed? It makes more sense than Colorado or Washington or anywhere else in this country.”

OK, conservatives and liberals, I now welcome your polite and respectful counterpoints in our Review-Journal comments section. See you there.

Doug Elfman’s column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/entertainment/reel.