GOP's appeal to moderates

By definition a moderate is supposed to be a reasonable creature who avoids the extremes that persons of a more passionate or less balanced mentality might go to.The moderate, we are told, votes for the man who shares his calm, balanced view. In reality, the self-identified moderate probably is a person who votes according to mood rather than principle.

This is why the idea of appealing to moderates by loosening one's principles doesn't make one more attractive. Most of the so-called moderates never look at a politician's ratings or voting record, but rather rely completely on the Main Stream Media for their information (actually for their take masquerading as information.)

The MSM doesn't provide information so much as shading and puffing, terms for misinformation that is just short of a lie. I should add that the MSM isn't above a lie if they can make it look plausible or accidental-like. Also the term moderate is hard to pin down so it can easily be redefined at will by anyone with enough chutzpah to move the definition of the related extreme, be it to the left or the right. In other words, it is not a self-defined term.

This is why a republican candidate, short of being to the left of their democrat opponent, can rarely get credit for being a moderate, so the moderates, even if we believed that they exist as portrayed in common imagination, don't even know the republican candidate reflects their values.

So the republican who has sold out on principle doesn't get the support of the rarely photographed, informed and committed moderate. Also he can't attract the unaffiliated voters with appeals to his upstanding character, the rightness of his principles (which he doesn't have) or his colorful or memorable comments in defense of those principles (which he has never made).

In a word such a candidate is objectively boring, somewhat contemptible as a sell-out who is willing to sink to any level to pander for votes, and he stands to lose votes from conservatives which makes him less electable! In the mean time the press will prop up the Democrat and attack The Maverick as always. Good luck with that!

We may not like the Democrat/Republican stranglehold of the pendulum , but short of a miracle it is what we are stuck with. Because we rely mostly on conservative Republicans to fight for traditional values and the traditional freedoms such as the right to practice our religion and the right to bear arms, the election of a moderate republican means these issues are losing ground.

While we look with hope at the new crop of conservative democrats, that is all it is - hope, there is not much of a track record, and in some cases to the extent that some of them have shown themselves (Bob Casey Jr.) they are liberal as a dog's hind leg. While a Christian may or may not be a conservative republican in good conscience he can not in good conscience be a liberal on the life or marriage issues.

Add to that the concept of subsidiarity which has been so fleshed out in authentic Catholic social teaching that it is hardly in the realm of prudential judgement. Besides Rerum Novarum, Pope Benedict himself has recently written against so-called liberation theology. It is well settled that socialism and Christianity are fundamentally opposed; the socialists have recognized this for years and have been trying to destroy Christianity (which is why they attack the family.)

While one could say that the republicans preach laissez-faire capitalism, they certainly don't make law that way. In fact most new laws by definition are hands-on! It would be easy to realign them away from the big business/socialist/capitalist mix and start to take on a small business/widely disbursed ownership type of capitalism. After all what they are doing now has failed; only a new idea can beat the old socialism.