The Washington Post continues to salt its news columns with editorial judgments, judgments that are no less, well, judgmental for being possibly unconscious.
In an August 19 article staff writer Evelyn Nieves discusses the fits “Schwarzenegger’s moderate views” are causing California conservatives. What are those “moderate views”?
He supports abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. If his recent statements, and those of his economic adviser, Warren E. Buffett, are any indication, he may even be against tax cuts.
If support for “abortion rights, gay rights, and gun control” is “moderate,” doesn’t that mean that all Democrats are moderate? What, then, do liberal and conservative Democrats believe? But wait, what conservative Democrats?
Or again, from the same article:
Conservatives could also push Schwarzenegger into publicly stating his support for their key positions, such as curbing illegal immigration, and thus alienate the moderate voters who might support Schwarzenegger and provide the margin of victory in a close race.
So, “moderate” voters support illegal immigration? How interesting.
Or take the newly “centrist” Howard Dean. (Or, as Henny Youngman would say, please take him.) In a page one article on Saturday, staff writer Jim VandeHei discusses Howard Dean’s effort to broaden his base beyond the Bush-bashing left. According to VandeHei, Dean is “increasingly reaching out to centrists by talking up balanced budgets and gun rights, an issue with broad appeal in key southern states.” And again:
Anticipating a relentless wave of attacks that he is too liberal and perceived as too antiwar to win a national election, Dean is playing up his “centrist” views, mostly his support for a balanced budget and gun rights.
When Republicans or citizens of Red America endorse gun rights they are almost always portrayed as right wingers, when they’re not dismissed as stooges of the NRA. But when an odd Democrat agrees, he’s a “centrist.”
If a belief in balanced budgets and gun rights makes one a “centrist” in the Democratic Party, who are the Democrats with views further right? Don’t there have to be positions to your left and right to make your views “centrist”?
“Moderate” and “centrist” are mush words that mean nothing, except on those occasions when reporters say “moderate” when they mean “sensible.” Although the Republicans have more “moderates” than the Democrats (there are pro-gay, pro-choice, and anti-gun Republicans; there are no anti-gay or pro-life and very few pro-gun Democrats), the fact is that the road in neither party is wide enough these days to have much of a middle. Reporters (and their editors) would do everyone a service to stop pretending otherwise.
UPDATE (25 Aug.) – As noted above, one of the things that marks Arnold as a possible “moderate” is the suspicion that he is not sufficiently opposed to taxes. In Maryland, however, still according to an article today in the Washington Post, the moderates are opposed to taxes!
Michael Busch, Democratic Speaker of Maryland’s House of Delegates, “has alarmed moderates and conservatives in his party” with his talk of the need for more taxes.
So, moderates in Maryland oppose taxes, but moderates in California don’t oppose them. Perhaps reporters should moderate their use of “moderate.”
Insanity
John Rosenberg has a fabulous takedown of some of the more bizarre statements coming out of the press about the California recall these days, as…
If a belief in balanced budgets and gun rights makes one a “centrist” in the Democratic Party, who are the Democrats with views further right?
“Republicans.”
Seriously, I guess I see it differently. I think that belief in gun rights is pretty mainstream (if you want to analyze it at all). And I’m speaking as what some might call a liberal Democrat. Who believes in gun ownership rights.
Is that so…hard to understand?
My point is this: I don’t care if I fit/don’t fit into somebody’s pigeonhole of right-left-conservative-liberal. My political views are a mosaic; I’m perfectly OK with that. Furthermore, I don’t much care for the “road analogy” you speak of. Unless you want to acknowledge that I play on both sides of the road on occasion.
Q: Why’d the Democrat cross the road?
A: To go visit his guns.
If a reporter has a hard time understanding that, well, my response is: “So what? Deal with it.”
Pro-gun, pro-life, AND pro-gay and pro-lesbian. What does that make me? Conservative? Liberal? “Left”? “Right”? Justice Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia were both appointed by President Reagan, both are men of the “Right” — and yet two men could not be more diametrically opposed in their most fundamental premises. The real dualism is: Individualists vs. Collectivists.
Steven: You say, “Pro-gun, pro-life, AND pro-gay and pro-lesbian. What does that make me?” That’s easy, a right-wing “extremist”–at least from the viewpoint of Hollywood, academia, or the network media.
I am curious, though as to what would constitute an “anti-gay/lesbian.” I presume there is such a position if one can, by contrast, stake out a philosophy to the positive.
Personally, I don’t believe gays should be persecuted or preferred. I believe that whichever willing adult you engage intimately is of no concern to anyone but you; and further acknowledge that gays themselves are the ones least likely to abide by this discretion. I wonder if this is a pro-or anti- gay position.
Finally, I think you are dead-on regarding ultimate political philosophies, but ironically miss the manifestation these have taken in modern America. Individuals vs. the collective wage war every day for hearts and minds. This IS the battle of Right vs. Left.
Of course there are pro-gun Democrats. The governor of my state is a pro-gun Democrat (many say that’s why he’s governor). There’s no shortage of Democratic voters who support gun rights. What there is a shortage of is national Democratic leaders, presidential candidates, etc., who support gun rights. Or pro-life positions.
A politician who said that in his home state, homosexual sodomy should be legal, but that each state should decide for itself whether sodomy should be legal would hardly be described as a supporter of gay rights, would he?
So it’s hardly accurate for the Post to discuss Howard Dean’s “support for… gun rights.” Dean’s (professed) view is that the second amendment, out of all provisions of the Bill of Rights, should be applied on a state-by-state basis. He thinks states should be free to infringe on the RKBA if they choose. Have we reached the point where any Democrat who doesn’t call for the elimination of guns is a “centrist” on the issue?
An Annoying Little Word
As currently employed, the word “moderate” simply defies definition. Mostly, it’s simply a gooey, meaningless term used to imply virtue…