It really is amazing how far we’ve come as a nation, politically, in just two short Presidential terms. Though to be fair, nothing about them has felt even remotely short, despite the brief slice of American history they represent. However, it’s over the past few years that I have seen the most remarkable shift in that phantasm of American politics: the moderate. Now personally, I don’t believe that any such creature even exists. I think it’s a political fiction designed to generalize large segments of the voting population into statistically manipulatable blocks of data. If you are a pollster, you need to use the concept of moderates so that your numbers make sense. But if you work in the Reality Based Community, it really isn’t a significant term.

One reason is that all people are, to a minor degree, moderate. Because moderate itself is a term that requires comparison and relationship to exist. It is defined by extremes of the spectrum that very few people strictly adhere to. For example, I’m relatively liberal on social issues like welfare. However, I know I am not as liberal as a reasonable percentage of the voting population. But by no means could I ever be considers conservative. Likewise, I usually agree with conservatives on issues of gun control, though not to the extent that they often take those rights. I, however, actually see Second Amendment Rights as a liberal position, and am simultaneously disgusted with the Democratic stance on gun control and the Republican reasoning for their stance. So am I a moderate? Not hardly. But that’s where I’d poll based on those two issues. And the problem there is that someone who was against social welfare programs and in favor of gun control would likewise poll as a moderate.

Additionally, a lot of people get lumped into the moderate category if they simply have party-independent views on certain issues. As though political affiliation was just a giant see-saw, and placing weight on both sides evenly is the same as sitting in the center. Rudy Giuliani wants to be Mr. Big Tough Conservative, but he’s also pro-choice, in favor of gun control, and not really religious at all (or else just piss poor at following his faith). Does the fact that he is left of center on abortion rights make his stance on Iran (bomb the shit out of it, in case you were wondering) any more moderate? Of course not. But if you were going to poll Giuliani as a voter, and you ran down the list of his political inclinations, he’d probably wind up being considered a moderate in terms of your data. Add to that the people who simply label themselves as moderates or independents because they are mortifyingly embarrassed by their defacto political party, despite where they stand on the actual issues, and the lines blur past the point of distinction.

So if we accept that the term moderate is essentially a construct of political marketing, that still leaves us to figure out who the people being called moderates actually are. The Republicans thought, up until a few years ago, that they knew who moderates were. They considered them timid, frightened people, too soft and cowardly to even take a stance on the things they believed in. Thus, they crafted a rhetoric that could appeal both to their vastly zealous voting base and to their perception of the “middle” as being spineless and weak. That platform was famously labeled God, Guns, Gays & Gringos (and when I say famously, I mean I said it once or twice on my website). Liberals were going to ban the bible, outlaw all firearms, force everyone to marry gay people and give your job to a brown person. What’s sad is that, for a little while, that actually worked.

Of course, it worked in part because the Democrats had their heads so far up their asses they could have performed self colonoscopies. Maybe they got used to Bill Clinton fending off the entire right wing on his own, and when Clinton left office they found themselves completely unable to get by without him. Maybe they would have grown complacent no matter who had been President. And maybe they themselves fit the Republican profile of a spineless moderate more than anyone who was actually voting for them. Either way, the wedge issue buffet of God, Guns, Gays & Gringos completely destroyed them. And these weren’t new platforms. In fact, these were all traditional right wing social issues. But they were pushed relentlessly and shamelessly from the 2002 elections forward.

So how is that platform doing for them now? Neither of their primary front runners are religious, and one of them isn’t even considered to be a Christian by most Christian measures, and certainly not by the All Important Evangelicals. They’ve both been in favor of gay rights, abortion rights and played fast and loose with immigration. And as for the Presidential candidates who have been hitting the four G’s hard? Well, Huckabee came up for air the past week or so, but the rapist pardon scandal will probably push him back down under. So there’s your God candidate. Duncan Hunter is definitely the Guns candidate, and until about eight seconds ago, you forgot he was even running. There isn’t even a strong anti-gay candidate to vote for, and Tom Tancredo’s virulent fight against the scary, swarthy-skinned people has garnered him an amazing one percent of the Republican vote.

That’s just how badly George Bush and the neoconservative movement has screwed the pooch for the rest of the Republicans. Even their own base isn’t interested in the typical wedge issues. There are finally things more important to talk about than God, Guns, Gays & Gringos. To say nothing of the lesser wedge issues like flag burning (which doesn’t come up as often, and also is even harder to turn into a “G” word than immigration, so it didn’t make the list). Suddenly, supposedly conservative voters are as interested in real domestic concerns like health care, energy conservation, and even wealth distribution as liberals.

In short, a noteworthy chunk of the Republican base is trending towards what a pollster would call moderate. Or what a sane person would call “sometimes liberal, sometimes conservative”. Admittedly, that doesn’t fit into a pie chart nearly as well. But for Democratic candidates who have strong credentials on these issues (and between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, even the weakest of the three is fairly strong), that could translate into huge returns in the national election. For years, Democrats were saddled with candidates who were as weak and meandering as the moderates they were supposedly trying to court. For once, the Republicans are the ones with that disadvantage. And without their comfortable wedge issues to rely on, I honestly don’t know how they’re going to maintain from now until November of 08.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.