Moving the Goal Posts
by tristero
Some telling micro-rhetoric, courtesy the Times, which really should know better, y'know?
Mr. Cruz, now a Texas senator and a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, rarely invokes the 2000 race and recount. He has largely disavowed the comparatively moderate Bush wing of the Republican Party in pursuit of conservative ideological purity.
Comparatively moderate? George W. Bush? The president that flew back to Washington to intervene on the side of rightwing religious lunatics during the Schiavo madness? That countenanced torture and went to war at the behest of far-right neocon ideologues?
Holy Overton Window, Batman! In a world where a man as extreme in his opinions as George W. Bush is described as comparatively moderate, anyone with a sensible foreign policy, a reasonable level of religious observance, or even simple commonsense can only be thought a commie radical.