[cothrige]

They can argue that they are "moderate" Democrats because they have renamed everything. If something is even remotely not liberal it is "extremism from the Right." And if it is super, ultra liberal it is "moderate." In their view of the world there is no such thing as the "extreme Left" or "extreme liberalism." That is moderate after all.

This is one of my big problems with conservatives I see on TV, either hosting shows or involved in discussions and debates. They don't argue these terms and just let it stand. They counter what the person is arguing, such as taxes or health care, but too often they do nothing to really respond to these fictitious definitions of moderate and extreme. People keep hearing these ideas and they will eventually, if they haven't already, start to believe that "moderate" is a Left of center position rather than the opposite. We have to stop allowing the Left to set the terms in debates. It is a losing policy.

[Ronbo1948]

Back in the day when I was in politics, I never let the Left define the terms. I remember in the 1980s my Democrat opponent in a debate at a Community College in Florida kept called the Nicaraguan Resistance, “Contras” - and I refused to use the term.

I went on to paint the freedom fighters of Nicaraqua, as a contemporary French Resistance against the Nazis.

I won the debate.

It is truely written that if you let your opponent define the terms, you always lose the debate.