BooMan asks, “What’s a moderate, anyway?”

What's a Moderate, Anyway?

It is false to assume a single mainstream conservative (Republican) position and a single mainstream liberal (Democratic) position can both be identified regarding just any political question, according to criteria acceptable to all fair-minded observers.

Nor, if there were, would it always be clear that certain other positions on the same issues could be regarded as between the two.

All the same . . .

A centrist or a moderate (without party qualification) is someone who attempts to split the difference between the two mainstream positions on every or nearly every significant issue.

And a moderate Republican is someone who comes down at the midpoint between the centrist and the conservative positions while a moderate Democrat comes down at the midpoint between the centrist and the liberal positions – again, on every or nearly every issue of moment.

With regard to some issues this sort of geometry is not too absurd.

Think of the abortion issue, for instance.

At the left we have the standard liberal/feminist favoring abortion on demand from conception to the very end of pregnancy and increasingly daring in supporting outright infanticide at least in the case where abortion fails and the baby, contrary to plan, is born alive.

At the right we have the Catholic position allowing no abortions at all, ever, under any circumstances (and certainly no infanticides), though allowing procedures undertaken to save the mother or save her health though they foreseeably result in the death of the unborn so long as that is not the point of the effort.

But also at the right we have the (More moderate? Less extreme?) Protestant position that abortion ought to be allowed only in the early days and only in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.

At the center I suppose we could locate my own view that abortion on demand should be allowed before the fetus is recognizably a human child and after that if actually killing the child is really necessary to save the life of the mother, or to prevent grave harm to her health.

But I am not aware of anybody who actually takes this view.

On abortion, there are no centrists?

Too, after the fetus is recognizably a child, I think killing it ought to be allowed under circumstances similar to those in which euthanasia of a living infant ought to be allowed.

But I suppose that’s neither here nor there since euthanasia isn’t actually an issue in America, though it should be.

Another example might concern gay marriage.

The liberal view is that gays ought to be allowed to marry enjoy the same package of legal rights, on the whole, as hetero marrieds.

The conservative view flatly disallows that or anything remotely like it.

And the centrist (Center left? Moderate Democrat?) view allows for civil unions entailing a package of rights similar to but not the same as those of hetero marrieds, and differing perhaps with regard to such matters as the right to adopt.

But where it is only too obvious no unique mainstream conservative or unique mainstream liberal position exists the ideas of centrism and moderation have no purchase.

Consider the immigration issue on which the conservatives are split as between their Main Street version and their libertarian and Wall Street versions.

Consider questions related to marriage, divorce, and sexuality that split the Christian right from the seculars and the libertarians.

The simplistic geometry of left, right, and center doesn’t always work out.

And, anyway, it’s a myth that everybody in the country is at the same point on this imaginary left to right continuum with respect to each major subject of political controversy.

For example, as became clear during the campaign season of 2012, there are a lot of people who side with the left on taxation, earned benefits, environmental concerns, and general regulation of the economy but found Ron Paul’s foreign policy outlook far more appealing than that of any of the Democrats who sought their party’s nomination.

In fact I would guess it’s actually the norm for people’s preferences to split like that, with ordinary folk finding themselves more sympathetic to the left on some issues and more to the right on others, and rather centrist in outlook on still others.

And what is there to make of people whose views have no representation at all?

Protectionism is rejected, for example, by all but small minorities in both major parties.

Favoring that is neither leftist, rightist, nor centrist!

Hence the popular and very natural dissatisfaction with both parties, with people who attempt to run as centrists, and with the whole political process.

Hence the notorious difficulty, for many people, of making up their minds in order to vote.

Hence the many people who throw up their hands and stay home when they see they really have no issue-based or even character or personality based preference and they don’t want to vote for one or the other candidate based on haircuts or wardrobe.

(And that’s leaving aside the other, and maybe the chief, reason for disgust at politics, the astounding prevalence of dishonesty that is so habitual and widespread it has become entrenched even in the “understanding” of the constitution upon which important standing decisions are based, to the point where few would really want to face the consequences of abandoning quite all of it.)