As candidates in purple districts, Republicans often take pains to run as moderates, to talk about the importance of looking at each issue independently, how very little can be solved using straight ideological solutions. They will pander to moderate-to-liberal interests, claiming support for environment, workers, community, older citizens, immigration reform, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, local issues supported by liberals and all manner of other things that wouldn't be allowed in the back of the bus in a red district.
My Congressman, now Senator, Mark Kirk is a great example. Nice Mr. Moderate, plying his military background and reasonable positions to get votes from the suburbanites of Northern Illinois, a reasonably wealthy soccer-mom and -dad kind of district. Lots of corporate professional jobs, a sort of ghetto for well-off employees of Abbott Laboratories, Baxter International, Allstate, Cardinal Healthcare, Walgreens, and well, you get the picture. Nice houses, lawns, little villages with cool restaurants and bars, more hair salons and spas than restaurants, and American flags in the local well-groom parks, rubber mats under the jungle gyms, highly rated schools and non-existent violent crime.
For the dark side, go under the orange snail.
The dark side is this. Mr. Kirk, like all of his so-called moderate Republican kin, regardless of their reasonable appearances, votes with the nut jobs. When push comes to shove, the people like Kirk are indistinguishable from Louie Gomer, Steve Kingnut, Michelle Botchmann, Calgary Raffi Cruz, and the other extremists of the Rabid Frothing Clown Party.
The point is, a vote for a supposed moderate Republican is actually a vote for the most batshit crazy in the cave. There is no excuse for any moderate or independently minded citizen to ever cast a vote for a moderate R -- there is no latitude whatsoever for that person once they get wherever they are going to legislate. They may be allowed to cast the occasional meaningless vote on a moderate issue to keep their local cloak up, but it is just a cloaking device.
That is the ad I'd like to see going into the '14 elections -- no matter what the moderate R seems to be, if elected that person puts on the clown outfit and starts frothing at the mouth. Doctor Jeckel is ALWAYS Mr. or Ms. Hyde, without exception. Two images back-to-back, no fade: the R candidate's own campaign picture, followed immediately by the Rabid Frothing Clown, then followed by a collage of the nut cases, followed by headlines with "Social Security Killed", "Medicare Dead", "Medicaid Cut Off", "Food Stamps Eliminated", "Women, Infants and Children Food Program Defunded", "EPA Shut Down", "Contraceptive Medications and Devices Outlawed", "Education Funding Out", "Forty-three Dead in Mass Shooting", "Another 12,000 Deported from Texas This Week", "Retiree Tent City Overrun by Cops", and yes, "Obamacare Finally Dead", moving to conclude with pictures of nuts with guns in three-corner hats, oil spills, Katrina ruins, Sandy ruins and horrifying war pictures. The voice over: "if you vote for this" (picture of the candidate), "You get this" (picture of the Rabid Frothing Clown, "And this", then the collage of nut cases, interspersed with the headlines, "And this" (pictures). "Vote Democrat and avoid all that." Fade to Black.
That is what I'd like to see.
It's extreme.
Because that is what we get when a vote is cast for a "Moderate" Republican.