Which Party Really Needs Moderation?

Mort Kondracke-" Political moderates predominate in the U.S. electorate, but the two parties are increasingly captives of their extremes. Will the moderates ever rise up and assert themselves?"

We've heard it before, and we keep hearing it like a broken record: the Republican Party is in danger of being held hostage by the Religious Right. It gets mentioned in passing, like Kondrake does here, that the left has it's own extemists:

There's no question that the Democratic Party is just as much captive of the left as the GOP is of the right. Unions, pro-choice feminists, trial lawyers and civil rights liberals call the shots.

America-basher Michael Moore was lionized at the last Democratic convention. MoveOn.org is a major party mouthpiece. Leftists dominate the Democratic blogosphere. And Howard "I hate Republicans" Dean is party chairman...

But - to paraphrase John F. Kerry - help is on the way!

...But the Democratic Party has an influential moderate wing, led by the Democratic Leadership Council, with which a number of 2008 presidential candidates are affiliated, including frontrunning Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.)...

Deroy Murdock does a splendid job of debunking the myth of "Hillary as Moderate" in his article Senator Fake. But I'll leave that topic for another day.

It seems that the left is always using the "Religious Right" as a bogeyman to scare people about what might happen, while turning a blind eye to the actual actions of their far leftist compatriots. The ACLU's war against the Boy Scouts and nativity scenes is a prime example.

The John Roberts attack ad that NARAL just pulled is another.

Froma Harrop-"NARAL Gets Pub But Damages Own Case"

What NARAL Pro-Choice America was up to remains unclear, but we who defend a right to abortion wish the group would go away. The group created an uproar by running a television ad that linked U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to the criminal who bombed a clinic in Birmingham, Ala.

The ad has been pulled, thank you. It was so off-the-wall you wondered whether NARAL really cared about preserving our reproductive rights or whether it just wanted to raise a quick buck by manufacturing a crisis. Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan group that judges political ads for accuracy, said the spot was false, misleading and unfair.

The abortion issue doesn't belong in a Punch and Judy show. It is a tough issue, or should be, for everyone...

No matter what side of the abortion issue you are on, it can be agreed that Harrop is a responsible spokeswoman for the pro-choice position. NARAL is not. But NARAL is the one who is heard in the din. And note that not one "moderate" Democratic elected official has come out against the NARAL article, for fear of offending the fund-raising activists of the far left.

The problem of extremists on the left controlling the dialog is far greater than that of extremists on the right, since the leftists are more involved in fund raising and have much more media access. To quote Moveon.org: "It's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back". They can have it. Real moderates are leaving the Democrats in droves.

PS - As I mentioned above, no moderate Democrat has come out publicly against the NARAL ad. But a moderate Republican - Arlen Specter - has. Patrick Leahy's comments- "I am not saying they shouldn't do what they do, I just wish they didn't." - are too lame to count.