What’s Wrong With Moderate?

The astounding results are being tallied right now as I write this post. Newt Gingrich has clearly won big in the State of South Carolina. This, I fear, is going to make the Newt’s already bulging head swell to hydrocephalic proportions. His penchant for unbridled grandiosity will magnify well beyond insufferable to the point of unbearable in the coming days and weeks.

Much of the credit is due to Newt’s two successful debate performances during which he fed his hungry Obama hating audience the all ultra-right-wing evangelical socially statist  pabulum they love to hear.  

He also got a huge assist right at the beginning of the last debate from John King, the CNN moderator, who started the contest with the stupidest and most irrelevant question I have ever heard in a presidential debate: “Do you want to talk about your ex-wife’s infidelity allegations against you?”

Not surprisingly, Gingrich blasted that puff ball out of the park and got a standing ovation in the bargain. The audience was his from that point on. Their fervid emotional hatred for the left-leaning mainstream media overwhelmed and blinded them to any semblance of sober and rational judgment. And they carried that hot emotional response right on through into the primary voting booths.

Newt Gingrich likes to paint his major rival, Mitt Romney, over and over again as a “Massachusetts moderate,” as if that’s a bad thing, but I ask you: what’s wrong with moderate? What is wrong with moderation in politics as well as in life?

Obviously, the alternative to a political moderate is a political extremist. Newt Gingrich is therefore admittedly a political extremist. His views are extreme. His politics are extreme. Both he and Rick Santorum are political right-wing-ultra extremists; war mongers; interventionists; social statists; and religiously oriented tyrants by any definition of those terms.  

Do the Republican’s really believe that they can successfully run a right-wing political extremist against Barack Obama in the general election?

Some hard core right-wingers like to think that Obama is a leftist extremist, but next to Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama looks like an attractive moderate. Hell, next to the Newt, he looks like the soul of moderation. And on top of that, Barack Obama, at least, appears to be a nice guy, an amiable fellow, which is a hallmark of personal moderation.  

Newt Gingrich admitted in an interview just recently that if the presidential election were a popularity contest he would lose because he is not perceived as a nice guy. He apparently knows too well that he comes across as a mean spirited, puffed up, angry, old white man; the kind of person who disdains moderation in all its forms.

I have some news for Mr. Gingrich: presidential elections are definitely popularity contests of the first order.  

Contrast the Newt with Mitt Romney, who seems like a nice guy. He doesn’t get mad. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t become vicious. He just remains steady, intelligent, capable, caring, even keeled, rational, and likable. What’s wrong with that?

If there is one thing that irritates me with Mitt Romney it’s that he won’t own up to being a moderate. He’s a moderate, and that’s a good thing. He should make the most of it. Moderation is the stuff that will beat Barack Obama in the general election.

So when the likes of Newt Gingrich despairingly call him a “moderate,” Romney should answer them simply and concisely: “Yes, I’m a moderate; I will govern as a moderate conservative. Do you want the alternative? Do you want an extremist? If that’s what you want, then go ahead and vote for Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann – the unelectable political extremists of the Republican Party.”  

Mitt Romney didn’t lose in Iowa and South Carolina because he’s a moderate. It wasn’t his tenure and success at Bain Capitol, or his reluctance to disclose his taxes that did him in.  And it wasn’t Gingrich’s skill at the debates either. He lost because he’s a Mormon, and most of the ultra-right-wing evangelical Christian bigots in those two states simply will not bring themselves to vote for a Mormon, even if it means Obama will be re-elected president.

A Mormon trying to pander himself to those types as someone he’s not is going to lose their vote and that is what happened in those Bible thumping states. If he would only assert that his conservative moderation is what’s necessary to win the general election, and start to paint Gingrich and Santorum as the statist political extremists they are, he’d revive his candidacy in my opinion.

But when it comes to the ideal of moderation in politics as opposed to extremism, Ron Paul is clearly the winner hands down. Of the remaining candidates, Romney comes in second by comparison, even though the blood thirsty ultra-right-wingers of the Republican Party call Paul’s politics extreme.

To that nonsense, I can only say:

Since when is the concept of liberty extreme?

Since when is the idea of sound money extreme?

Since when is the notion of thrift in government extreme?

Since when is advocacy for world peace extreme?

Since when is non-intervention; non-aggression; and non-violence extreme?

Since when is respect and tolerance for the rights of all extreme?

What’s wrong with moderate?