Politics: Is there a Mutual War on Moderates?

Whether you love moderates or hate them, you have to admit that they never seem to last for as long as pretty much all the other politicians. A Republican can be solidly conservative and never face any troubles as their support from their base is going to trump anyone who hates them. The same is true with Democrats who are solidly liberal. But when someone accepts the sides of both parties and ranks around the middle, it seems like people hate them.

You’d think that moderates would be those who are most liked from either party as they are willing to find the center and still be bi-partisan in this hyper partisan world. But they tend to lose office or are hated by their own party. Often, they can just be accused of going too far with their ways. In truth, they are just seen as traitors of their own party. I believe that I covered a point like this in a previous post called “Are RINOs just a bi-partisan Republican?” Well, it might have had a similar affect on DINOs too.

Of course, maybe the issue isn’t that they don’t garner the support of their own party. They could just be seen as not moderate enough. Could Claire McCaskill still be in office if she had voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh? Would people hate Susan Collins now if she had voted to convict Trump? Was it good then that Joe Manachin was the only Democrat to vote for both of both of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court?

I may not be in favor of moderates so much as I’m in favor of politicians getting along. That just doesn’t seem to happen nowadays. But this might only happen if there are still moderates in the senate and other offices. So what is wrong with moderates?

It more than likely is a problem with their own party. I could be generalizing here, but it seems like when people lose support of their own party, they lose reelection. They might not actually be a moderate, but are still seen as betraying their party’s values. That’s why both Mark Kirk and Bruce Rauner would up being voted out in Illinois. They just couldn’t get the support of their own party even if it meant someone who did properly define the other party got voted in instead.

The fact that neither party seem to like moderates within them can still be an issue. You see, I think that we need people getting together. I don’t want there to be a war on all the Democrats who are pro-life more than I’d want conservatives to hate their own if they came out in support of gay marriage. People can work together and get votes they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise by having more moderate forms of support. Obamacare might not be around if we didn’t have people who, however briefly, still voted with the other party. Clinton might have been voted out of office by the senate if a good chunk of Republicans didn’t vote to acquit.

I leave it up to you to decide how to vote. I can get annoyed by Daily Kos articles about people who don’t think that moderates should ever have elective office. But they do have a good point about some of them. Were they moderates on just one or a handful of issues? And would they be a good representation of their party despite sometimes having policies against it? You can be the judge whenever they are up for office.