So, what is a moderate

E. J. Dionne Jr has a commentary this morning, Rising Radical Center which raises a question in my mind.

HANCOCK, Mich. -- President Bush's six-year effort to create an enduring Republican majority based on a right-leaning coalition is on the verge of collapse. The way he tried to create it could have the unintended consequence of opening the way for an alternative majority.

This incipient Democratic alliance, while tilting slightly leftward, would plant its foundations firmly in the middle of the road, because its success depends on overwhelming support from moderate voters. That's why a Democratic victory in November -- defined as taking one or both houses of Congress -- would have effects far beyond a single election year.

The Democrats' dependence on moderate voters and moderate candidates belies Republican claims that a Democratic victory would bring radically liberal politics to Washington. In fact, the first imperative of Democratic congressional leaders, if their party is successful, will be finding policies, ideas and rhetoric to allow the party's progressives and moderates to get along and govern effectively together.

I used to think of myself as a "moderate" and then suddenly a moderate was a neocon who called himself a Democrat. I am thinking of course of DLC types like Marshall Wittmann and yes, Joe Lieberman. The failed policies of the Bush administration have made it obvious that the ideology on the neocons and PNAC is a dangerous failure. There is nothing "moderate" about one who subscribes to the neocon vision of US hegemony. How they feel about domestic issues becomes irrelevant because their foreign policy threatens everything.

Neocons and the PNAC crowd are dangerous extremists not moderates. Those who support the Thomas Friedman idea of "free trade" are not moderates but feudalists who are in favor of destroying what made this country an economic power house, the middle class. There is nothing capitalistic about a world controlled by a few gigantic multinational corporations. If these are the moderates that are going to take over then I fear we will be no better off.