Moderates only look dead

http://www.chicagotribune.com ^ | May 10, 2012 | Steve Chapman

[Mozilla]

Moderates, we all hear, are an endangered species. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is the latest to be eliminated. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, announced her retirement in February. Bob Kerrey, a war hero and centrist Democrat who once represented Nebraska in the Senate, is running behind in a comeback bid.

The tea party, by contrast, is flexing its muscles in Indiana, where it helped conservative Richard Mourdock beat the once-invincible Lugar. Rick Santorum, who gave Mitt Romney a strong challenge, is well-positioned for a 2016 bid if Romney loses in November. Voters in North Carolina, which went for Barack Obama in 2008, approved a ban on same-sex marriage and civil unions.

But the center, contrary to what you might conclude, is not vanishing. In fact, it's not too much to say that this year promises the triumph of moderates.

Start with the presidential campaign. Every four years, Republican voters have the chance to send an uncompromising conservative to the White House — and every four years, they pass him up for a more pragmatic option.

In 1996, it was Bob Dole, followed in 2000 by George W. Bush, who insisted he was a "compassionate" (read: moderate) conservative. In 2008, John McCain, who spent much of his career offending the right wing, came out on top. This year, Republicans will nominate someone who previously has endorsed gay rights, abortion rights, gun control and a health insurance mandate.

Romney has done his best to reinvent himself as "severely conservative," but he still comes across as an unconvincing impersonator. He's moderate enough that at one point Santorum said that if Romney is the only alternative to Obama, "we might as well stay with what we have."

He had a point: Obama is not that far from Romney.

[Mozilla]

Rinos love electing Communists. Pretty Much.

[Uncle Ike]

” Moderates only look dead “

Hmmmm...

Maybe we should revive the practice of bayonetting the corpses, just to be sure, ya know...

[cripplecreek]

Moderates have moderated GOP into a coma. Its time for them to go moderate the party that actually needs it.

[Mozilla]

From the article:

"A lot of people who call themselves conservative should call themselves confused. Political scientists Christopher Ellis of Bucknell University and James Stimson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have determined that only one out of every five professed conservatives actually favors conservative policies on both moral and social welfare issues."

[Mozilla]

I think it is past time to divorce the GOP establishment because us conservatives do not agree with them on much and it is getting worse. They are basically Democrat-Lite.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Every four years, Republican voters have the chance to send an uncompromising conservative to the White House — and every four years, they pass him up for a more pragmatic option are railroaded by a process front-end loaded with crossover primaries run by party elites with no interest in a genuine conservative nominee who will do what must be done to downsize government.

Easy fix to that sentence.

[ryan71]

Moderate - A liberal that wears deodorant.

[FlipWilson]

Quote from the article: “Bob Kerrey, a war hero and centrist Democrat who once represented Nebraska in the Senate, is running behind in a comeback bid.”

I could have sworn Kerrey dropped out.

[dfwgator]

I heard Bob Kerrey was in Vietnam.

[FlipWilson]

Quote: “I heard Bob Kerrey was in Vietnam.” I think he is the one who shot John Kerry in the arse.

[JerseyanExile]

And what basis did they use to determine what “Conservative” is? The term conservative is incredibly broad in American politics.

[x]

"A lot of people who call themselves conservative should call themselves confused. Political scientists Christopher Ellis of Bucknell University and James Stimson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have determined that only one out of every five professed conservatives actually favors conservative policies on both moral and social welfare issues."

Maybe it's the "political scientists" who are confused.

They could have said the same thing about Democrats in bygone decades.

The majority party or tendency will always contain people of a variety of different views.

Minority parties or ideologies tend to be more compact.

Thirty or forty years ago teamsters and autoworkers who voted Democrat had very different views from academic or professional liberals or progressives who voted the same way.

That's still the case, but 1) fewer of those workers are voting Democrat and 2) more of their union leaders line up with those academic and profession class liberals or progressives.

So if people of widely varying views call themselves "conservatives" it's a sign that conservatives are the majority.

[x]

These moderates are scapegoated. They're singled out for things that most politicians of both parties -- most voters of both parties (and independents as well) -- supported, accepted, and promoted for decades.

Throw them all out, and not much will change policywise. There will just be a new set of moderates or RINOs to complain about and single out to blame for things that go much deeper and wider.

[Snardius]

I heard Bob Kerrey was in Vietnam.

He was...left one of his legs there.

[Mozilla]

I think a lot of Fiscal people are not social conservative in half the country. It leads to candidates who don’t want to deal with social issues but the majority of the tea party is social. I also think dems hijack the nomination process.