Haley In The Middle

Haley In The Middle

by digby

The consequences of moving the goalposts:

As dark as this picture is for congressional candidates, there’s bright news at the state level. Somehow, moderates are holding their own in governor’s races—and some of the party’s biggest rising stars are centrists in the statehouse ranks.
If Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint are the patron saints of hard-right anti-establishment types, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is their counterpart in the center. The wily head of the Republican Governors Association, a possible contender for president in 2012, preaches a big-tent philosophy that contrasts sharply with the ideological purification drive on the right.

Things have moved so far to the right that Haley Barbour is a centrist now.

It's true that he's a "Big Tent" Republican, at least to extent that he can get away with it. But it's not because he wants a bunch of lily-livered moderates in the party, but because he knows there aren't enough hardcore nuts in the country (yet) to sustain a far right majority. But that doesn't make someone a "centrist." It makes him a practical power broker.

Haley Barbour is hardcore conservative and a corporate whore. Unless you define Joe Lieberman as the far left, he most certainly is not a centrist.

h/t to AC