In action Obama has never been anything but ultra liberal. Only his rhetoric is moderate. I see no reason to think anything has changed just because he has put some moderates in key positions and appears to have backed off on some agenda items.

Let’s wait for him to actually take office and do something before we talk about how moderate he is.

In agreement with LAWizard, I don’t see Obama’s actions as being indicative of “centrist” policy making on the horizon. With all the Clinton re-treads, we may not be seeing the “change” Obama promised, but a Democrat in the White House is good enough “change” for most of them

As for people being used, I doubt they’ll ever tire of it. The party that fought against emancipation & civil rights has been using blacks for decades and the majority of them keep voting against the party of Lincoln. They’ve been using working-class voters (at least the unionized ones) forever and they don’t seem to mind. As for the pro-abortion and “peace at any cost” crowd, they don’t have anywhere else to go.

I think we are seeing classic Clinton style triangulation. Obama is using moderate rhetoric and is co-opting the most popular conservative positions towards coalescing power and ultimately advancing a leftest agenda.

But in answer to your question about how long will the base allow itself to be used I would point ot the GOPs recent experience. We allowed ourselves to used for about 5 years before large numbers of Republicans finally opened their eyes and realized that what was going on was far from conservative. Before that 5 year mark, anybody from the conservative wing of the GOP who dared criticize Bush was subjected to a withering attack from the “Bushbots”. But one day it was like somebody flipped a switch and just about everybody was criticizing Bush and it was more or less acceptable.