Understand very clearly how this works. For the last 12 years, the GOP has been pretending to be moderate, while its rabid dogs like Ann Coulter push the discourse further and further right. The Party looks good, the base is kept happy even though it doesn’t get everything it wants, and the very definition of moderate changes. Meanwhile, of course, the political temperature of the water starts to slowly boil the average American froggie, who is taken unawares.
Now, obviously, we do not want to repeat Republican tactics step by step. We don’t want to drive this truck as far left as the GOP has driven it to the right. To do so would engender a Democratic defeat as decisive as the drubbing we have given the GOP this year. However, this country’s discourse now stands SO far to the right that the people are ready for a change, and a major correction is now long past due.
It’s the middle that’s moved folks, the fringes are right where they’ve always been but now the country has been fooled into thinking the rightie fringe is where public policy, foreign and domestic, belongs and fighting against that crazy extreme simply makes them stronger. What is needed is light, lots of light, and for a long time the folks who represent the power that makes the light shine, the media, has had a blown fuse, their breaker has been tripped. This move here by Al Gore is a start. He really holds Diane Sawyer’s feet to the fire, not letting her get away with cosmetic focus and false issues and listen to how uncomfortable she is with that reality. She literally gets nervous and jumpy when he points out what she’s doing. We need more of that.