Query: shouldn't Dems be able to grab the center?

[Cary]

With some success Bush has been able to talk like he's more in the middle, but govern to the extreme right. It's hard to see anything he's done to show he's anywhere near the middle.

Given this fact, don't we want our candidate to grab the middle? The extreme left is going to have to go with ABB (I presume). If we can leave Bush exposed, pointing out again and again how everything he has done is extremely to the right, then we ought to do well with the undecideds.

Bush has recently played to the middle with the cynical Medicaid drug benefit, and immigration reform. But I don't think these moves have been well-received anywhere. I don't think his rhetoric is going to serve him as well as it did against Gore--and we all know he really lost that battle even without the extreme right-wing track record.

[MarianJack]

1. Not only capture the Center,...

...but embrace and welcome them. Most elections are won by taking the moderates. Bill Clinton was able to do so with a fairly progressive agenda and a moderate message.

I continue to believe that we have to hammer bush with the extremism of his own record.

The rethuglicans continue to this day to say that Clinton won by "stealing our issues". As usual, they're wrong. He didn't steal their issues, he moved into a vacuum created by the rethuglicans wholesale and pall mall RUN to the extreme right.

[bowens43]

2. Believe it or not the centrist repugs are happy with him,

it's the extreme right, the extreme conservatives who are most upset. He has paid them only lip service while signing legislation, bill after bill , that were opposed by the conservative base. The education bill, CFR, his support for an extension to the assault weapons ban, his request for an increase for the NEA, the 15 billion for AIDs in Africa , his amnesty request for illegals, the drug medicare benefit, the patriot act, the largest increase in government spending since FDR, these are not conservative issues.I see him as an extremist but I don't believe that centrist republicans do. Granted not all of these have become law but it's the right wingers who are pissed , not the moderate repugs.