I hate to break it to the liberal media, but if a party or candidate wins election after election, even in traditionally liberal areas, they aren't "hardline." They are mainstream. Salvani's positions accurately reflect the majority of Italians, he's not the rightwing lunatic that the press wants to make him out to be.
The problem with journos all over the globe is they take John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice as some form of Platonic form as ignore the fact that reality is dynamic. They haven’t updated their concept of reality since sophomore year college. And it shows.
This is how leftists operate, though. They keep marching farther left but still call their positions moderate or mainstream. Anything else they call hard right and extreme. They are masters at manipulating the language. For example, they have most media people saying undocumented immigrants, or even just immigrants, instead of illegal aliens, and they are not pro-abortion, they are pro-choice.
These elections are like the old famous ad, “They’re a spicy meatsaball”.