Paul Krugman noted recently that Rubio, the establishment choice and media darling, is hardly the moderate they are so desperately trying to make him out to be. He’s all they’ve got left, and he’s only hanging on by a thread. They still can’t bring themselves to cast Cruz in the “moderate” mold, and Kasich is too laughable to hang their hopes on. Should Rubio flame out, we might very well be told that Cruz is, in fact, the moderate choice. It is essential for their narrative that at least one Republican fill that role, because we all know that both parties are being pulled apart at the extremes; the Democrats by a guy indistinguishable from FDR, the Republicans by a guy indistinguishable from Adolph Hitler.
But I digress. Back to Rubio. Krugman highlights his extremism well, but I think there’s a good way to highlight the ever rightward drift of the political center as perceived by our betters. Ask yourself this: In what substantive way does Rubio differ from Rick Santorum? Santorum, in years past, never made it into the ranks of the moderates, but, had he managed to grift his way into the front of the pack this year, he might very well have. He hasn’t changed. But the laws of partisan equivalency demands that there be moderates in both parties, so the definition of that term becomes ever more fluid and the goalposts keep moving.
The probability is that the punditocracy, in converting Rubio to a moderate, is only getting in shape for the heavy lifting they’ll need to do once Trump gets the nomination. Once that happens, they will desperately search his record and utterances for signs of moderation. We’ll see newspaper stories about things he said 20 or 30 years ago that prove that he’s not the extremist he’s painting himself to be. Oh, and PS, should Bernie overcome the superdelegate fix, there will be no such coverage of him. He will always remain a wide eyed radical. That’s the asymmetry that has driven this nation ever rightward.
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