Uber-RINO Dede Scozzafava is Lowell Weicker in skirts. The MSM is absurd to call her a moderate- she’s an out-and-out liberal running in a conservative constituancy. She would be well-advised to withdraw and endorse Doug Hoffman.
You have to understand how the mainstream media's vocabulary works. According to them, there is NO such thing as liberals. There are only moderates, conservatives , and ultra-conservatives/right-wing extremists . Here's how people end up in any of their categories.
"Moderate" = Anyone who's not a card-carrying communist and doesn't fit the two categories below. Example sentence: "Hillary Clinton, brandishing her common sense, politically moderate positions , won over the people of New York in her 2000 Senate bid"
"Conservative" = Anyone who's ever done anything remotely right of center during their political career. Example sentence: "President Obama went on to defeat conservative Senator John McCain of Arizona"
"Extreme Right-Wing/Ultra Conservative" = Anyone who takes conservative positions the majority of the time. Example sentence: "One of the big losers of 2006 was Rick Santorum, an ultra conservative "family values" Senator from Pennsyavania whose appeal was limited to extreme right wing of the Republican Party"
Furthermore, how you become a "moderate" varies depending on political party. A Democrat who deviates from their own party on ANY part of the Dem platform is deemed a "moderate", i.e. "Howard Dean was demonized by Republicans as outside the mainstream during his 2004 campaign, though he had governed as a moderate in Vermont". (as a result, virtually every Democrat official is a "moderate" according to the MSM since only a handful have perfect 100% liberal track records. Jerry Brown, moderate. Jimmy Carter, moderate. Jesse Jackson, moderate. Etc.) However, in order to be labeled a Republican "moderate" by the mainstream media, you must disagree with the rest of the GOP on MOST of their platform, i.e. "Jeffords left the Republican Party in 2001 after realizing the party had simply become too right-wing and intolerant of moderate Republicans like himself"
In order to be labeled a "moderate on social issues", you must support abortion on demand in EVERY single circumstance, i.e. "Mark Kirk and Meg Whitman, both moderates on social issues, are the new face of the GOP for 2010". If a Republican favors any type of restriction on abortion, like banning late term abortion, they're not "moderate" in MSM land.
In order to be labeled a "fiscal conservative" by the mainstream media, you must fulfill the following criteria: 1) Call yourself a "fiscal conservative", regardless of what your views and record actually are 2) Be running against someone the mainstream media dislikes.
Note the mainstream media considers people that are "fiscally conservative and socially moderate" to be the ideal type of political official in America, and will give any candidate they want to win this label.
Anyone who believes that Scozzafava would endorse Hoffman is a fool. If she drops out, she will endorse the Democrat!