Radical, Not Moderate

The Republican presidential debate revealed how alarmingly far right the mainstream GOP has shifted.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Thursday, June 16, 2011, at 3:54 PM ET

The reaction to the first Republican presidential debate baffles me. Here you have the entire roster of candidates endorsing the new Republican orthodoxy—a Hooverism for the 21^st century—and yet commentators are acting as though there is somehow a new moderation among the candidates. Even my own esteemed Slate colleague Jacob Weisberg penned a column headlined "Going Sane," arguing that we are seeing a shift toward the middle among the Republican candidates.