Wouldn’t an extreme D or R just be one who adheres completely to all the party platform? What is wrong with that? Was that what Goldwater had in mind?

She decided on her own to endorse the Democrat.

I saw her on TV today (couldn’t hear what she was saying), and CNN identified her with an “R.”

If Dede had truly been a moderate Republican, she wouldn’t have had the problem. Being more of a moderate Democrat, she lost.

a matter of degree, and is why I prefer not to label some people/politicians. I like to label policies.

As usual, your columns make me think, and after 6 days, I finally understand what was nagging at me about this column but it requires a column to fully express.

A tease: I don’t think there is any comparison between

the numbers of actual extremists on the right and left
ditto in the dem party vs GOP
that the extremists control the dem party
and right wing extremists have never even had a voice in the GOP

column this week
could be in 5 minutes or 5 days

GC is tired

But they aren’t the “Independent Moderates,” who are officially unaffiliated with either major party.

Independent Moderates are vaguely interested in political issues, and they may have decided to vote for the Democrats or the Republicans, but they couldn’t explain to you why they made those decisions in a way that will pass a ‘reasonableness’ test. It’s impossible to reason with an Independent Moderate because they generally don’t understand what’s going on.

Written off the cuff, I wouldn’t defend this definition to the death, but I’ll make a few comments about your response. You probably don’t belong officially to either party (“pushed me out of the other camp”), but that would be the least of your disagreement, I imagine.

“Unfortunately, we have incompetents, hypocrites, crooks. and fanatics on both sides. Last time, I voted a split ticket ( the old saw about “voting for the man”).” That amounts to “a pox on both houses.” And voting a split ticket doesn’t make anybody a moderate.

The comment about oligarchy may be appropriate, but I don’t know how, unless you are suggesting nihilism and anarchy as the way to go.

If you want to be persuasive, show us all by writing a diary illustrating that your decision to call yourself a Moderate can “pass a ‘reasonableness’ test.” Or don’t even bother, and I will take your word for it that you “understand what’s going on.”

I could certainly be wrong, and my statement could seem way too broad and all-encompassing. I was definitely referring to the Independent Moderates that the media insists Republicans should be compromising their principles to attract. I stand by my definition, in that context. So, maybe it doesn’t apply to you.

The real battle isfinding and pitching the defined points. The Left has long pitched the far Left way out, while pitching the far Right as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, thus defining the center and thus defining the moderate.

The mor points on a map and the bigger the map becomes, the easier it becomes to ascertain the real center. But we are far from that.

A moderate in Massachusetts is much different than a moderate in Oklahoma just like a moderate in 2008 is different than a moderate in 2009.

The highest taker of the big taxers are described as “Moderate”

there is no extreme left…there is only extreme “right wingers”…and “moderates”