On February 25th, the California Democratic Party declined to endorse incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein for reelection, with many delegates attacking her for being a “conservative” Democrat. This is part of a pattern in which moderate candidates are attacked by their respective parties for being either a “liberal” Republican or a “conservative” Democrat. This is also seen with the national reaction to Heath Mello’s moderate stance on abortion, which saw several prominent Democrats call on him to drop out, calling him a “conservative.” Moderation is a pivotal piece to democracy and to Republican ideals, which is why it is quite terrifying that both political Parties have all but bucked moderation and have entered a “my way or the highway” extremist mindset.
It is this increasing support for ideological extremism, whether it be socialism in the Democratic Party or paleoconservatism within the Republican Party, which is causing Washington gridlock and driving this nation apart. Without moderation, nothing can get done. Look no further than the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and contrast it with the Democrats’ passage of the Affordable Care Act. Despite all of the different proposals to repeal and replace the ACA, moderate Republicans voted against every single version of the Obamacare repeal, causing its ultimate defeat. This is due to the fact that the moderate Republcans and their agendas had been ignored in the process of drafting the bill, with Republican leadership instead turning to firebrand conservatives such as Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse to write the repeal bill. The opposite of this mindset can be seen with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Moderate Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu were the primary influencers of the ACA’s language and policies, this allowed them to create a bill acceptable to their moderate agendas, causing the bill to become acceptable to them. All three voted for the ACA, without these three votes the bill would have failed, and fortunately for the American public, their voices were listened to and they helped to refine and pass the most sweeping healthcare overhaul since the Great Society which has helped to save millions of lives in just the past few years.
Since the tea party movement began this extremist mindset, we now regularly see bitter primary fights between moderate incumbents and extremist challengers who bill themselves as “a true conservative” or “a true progressive.” These primaries, more often than not, cause the weaker candidate to win their party’s nomination. This can be seen in the 2010 Senate Special Election in Delaware to replace Vice President Joe Biden. The moderate Republican frontrunner, Mike Castle led his likely Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, in virtually every hypothetical poll and the it was considered likely that the seat would flip Republican. Castle lost the Republican Primary to tea party candidate and political pundit Christine O’Donnell, who was well to the right of Castle. She lost in a 17-point landslide. In this case, she was by far the weaker Republican candidate, but was chosen by her Party due to her conviction to extremist conservative beliefs.
Moderation must not just be accepted by the nation as a whole, it must be heralded. If every member of Congress was a moderate, nearly all of the problems we face today, whether it be income inequality, global warming, or the division of the United States, would b