Like I told you last week, the word "liberal" has been so demonized that people answering polls shy away from the label, though they'd be more happy with liberal government policies. I'd like to see the government enact single-payer health care and then watch you guys try to take it away from the citizens after a year's trial run.

You wrote "at least not 'liberal' in the Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi sense of the word." They aren't liberals. They, along with Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel et al. helped Bush maintain these illegal, immoral wars, illegal eavesdropping and torture along with other faux conservative policies. "Faux" conservative in the sense that Ron Paul's (a true conservative) foreign policy outlook is closer to true liberals like Dennis Kucinich and Russ Feingold -- in other words -- they have America's best interest at heart.

You wrote " . . when actual positions on policy are not obscured by political personalities and partisan preference. . .." There is no partisan divide among beltway politicians. For the last 8 years and continuing under Obama, EVERYTHING that George Bush and the Republicans wanted were granted by vote tallies consisting of 99% of Republicans and over 50% of Democrats. A bi-partisan paradise that neglected the true desires of the electorate.

I hope that helps.

Wingnut is right when he says we are a center right country. It's just that the republicans have moved so far right that moderates seem liberal by comparison. European conservatives would be democrats here. Barry Goldwater would not be welcome in the current Republican party!

NOt to be too picky, but...

Why are you losing all the elections and seem likely to continue to do so?

It seems to me that the "center" can only be defined functionally as the point at the center of the actual political spectrum. To say that the country is center-right is like saying that all the children are above average. The assertion cannot be argued empirically since it is wrong by definition.

However, Joe explicitly questioned your equation of "Center-Right" status with values of "family, honesty and hard work." He wanted to know, wait a minute, who died, made the Right Wing God, and decided that esteem for family, honesty and hard work equals being Center-Right?

You hit the nail on the head; conservatives talk as if basic human values and decency are found exclusively on the right. Its like saying "Conservatives like sunshine, as do most Americans. So most Americans are conservatives."

The notion that liberals do not work hard can be disproved with a simple thought experiment; take the most uber-left mushy headed liberal professor at Princeton (conservatives love to hate professors). Now how did this lazy liberal BECOME a professor? He must have had to work hard to get the job; there are many more people that would like to be princeton professors than there are professorships. Therefore this professor must have worked extremely hard to get where he is, despite his evil marxist beliefs.

NRO recently chronicled the top ten conservative movies along with an explanation of what made them conservatives. Many of the explanations were along the lines of "the movie acknowledged there is good and evil" or "communists were the bad guys". The ridiculous caricature of liberals that conservatives have in their head is frightening.

Salon, please get rid of this moran, please! I keep thinking he'll actually say something of interest or really be thoughtful but it never happens. This liberal family hating reader is no longer coming to see his stuff, my last comment on him is simple. He's an idiot, he might even be Charles Krauthammer, he's just that stupid and condescending. byebye

I'd like to amplify your excellent point a little.

The political spectrum in America is what it is. And for its entire length it occupies a space that is dramatically to the right of all other 1st World developed countries.

Democrat policies are lockstep with the extreme right wing in nearly every other "western" nation.

So, against some notional "international scale of left-right" (that same useless scale that all intelligent people long ago abandoned as saying nothing of interest, but saying it very loudly) Wingnut is right that "America" is "right".

But the other side of that coin is that against the American spectrum American can, by definition, be neither right nor left. The American center, against the American political spectrum, is neither right nor left, it's the center. Again, this is just by definition.

It's like that old maths concept: if everyone in your class scores 91% on an exam, and you score 90%, then you fail.

Rather like Wingnut fails when he selectively grabs polls, twists the question being asked to align with his personal views, and then claims a "majority" agree with him.

If a "majority" in the US wanted Wingnut's policies, wouldn't Wingnut's party control a major federal legislative body in the United States? Just one?

If you add the "center" to the "right," then of course the country is center-right. By the same token, adding "center" to "left" makes it center-left.

Wingnut quickly skims past this point by claiming, without the slightest shred of evidence, that the "center" breaks 2-1 to the conservative side. His only argument for this entirely unsubstantiated claim is that, in one Gallup poll, those who do not call themselves moderates skew conservative by 40 to 21 percentage points.

It would be just as logical to assume that, after decades of vilification of liberals in the media, a substantial number of de facto liberals call themselves "moderates" and therefore that self-identified moderates truly skew 3-1 liberal.

Or to assume anything else, for that matter. Once you start down the path of just making stuff up, where's the stopping point?

Oh, and to answer Mr. Wingnut's question, "Is it conservatives or liberals who are engaged in an effort to expand or even rewrite the definition of what constitutes a family?" -- It is the social conservatives. They are the ones who, in violation of logic as well as morality and justice, are trying to redefine families headed by gay couples as non-families. Fortunately the public is, at last, catching onto them. The right's reliance on bigotry and intolerance to pander for votes isn't working as well as it used to.