Apparently, Liberal is 'someone who I disagreed with once,' while Moderate is 'someone who is sorta reliable to filibuster with.'

If you voted against him once, or believe in global warming or that the sky is supposed to be blue, you're a Liberal, right?

I don't think Sen. Hatch was trying to define liberal, conservative, and moderate. I think he was trying to make the point that because the Senate is more polarized ideologically, it is more difficult to craft legislation.

The Republicans are more responsible for the obstructionism than are the Democrats, though, and I wish some Republican would acknowledge that without pride.

I'd say his statement is rather accurate considering his perspective.

That is, compared to a Republican who is soo far to the Right that he's about to fall off the planet (and is central to the Republcian party of today), then moderate is about where Conservative was 15-20 years ago. That's a handfull of people.

What was considered to be Moderate 15-20 years ago is now solidly Liberal, and Liberal of that day is a Flaming Liberal Freakshow today (from a Hatch perspective).

Whoooo.. I am just catching my breath after that laugher. Man, I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. "we only have two liberals on the Republican side" BWaaaa hahahahahahaha...

I never realized how funny Hatch could be.

He's actually right. There is only one moderate in the Democratic caucus. In addition, there are forty seven conservative Democrats and and eleven progressives.

If Orrin Hatch told me it was sunny outside, I'd pick up an umbrella, go out and check for myself.

doubtful beat me to it.

I agree that from Hatch's perspective he is accurate, but of course from any rational point of view he is simply out to lunch. The sad thing is that Hatch is undoubtedly one of the more rational Republicans in the US Senate. At least he isn't calling for a right wing revolution like some of this brothers in the wingnut guild.

To be fair, he probably doesn't acknowledge Landrieu and Lincoln as Senators at ALL.

As a Mormon, he undoubtedly thinks they should be home baking cookies and ironing their husband's shorts.

And I imagine Specter is dead to him, too.

Eleven Democratic progressives? I wish. I used to count Kennedy as a caucus of one (Boxer disqualified herself when she campaigned for Lieberman AND got snotty when asked about it).

It's too early to really know about Franken, though I'm hopeful. However, my fear is that he'll decide it's his job to do what he thinks his constituents want rather than understanding he persuaded a majority of the rightness of his position during THE CAMPAIGN and then legislating accordingly.

The most "liberal" democrats are really at best moderates (which usually means accommodationists).

OT, but here's a pet peeve - why, after overwhelming democratic victories based on their campaign platforms, do we now have to buck them up with emails and phone calls of support? Why can't they just legislate on their campaign promises. Criminy, grow a spine (and if they really had any core principles, the spine would be there). Talkin to you, Barack.

I wonder just how conservative a Senate Dem has to be in order to qualify as a "moderate."

Slightly to the right of Dick Cheney.

...it seems to me the Senate Democratic caucus is filled with moderates...

I don't think "moderate" is really an accurate description for most of those senators. They may be moderate on some issues, but they are decidedly conservative on many others, and liberal on none. On balance they seem to me to be conservative. When compared with what is now the center of the Republican Party, they may be called moderate conservatives, but the word conservative is not optional, it seems to me.

Snowe and Collins are not liberal in any sense of the word. They may be moderate on a few issues, but they're conservative on everything else. That leaves them as conservatives -- on average more conservative than Nelson, but they can't meaningfully be called more liberal than their Republican peers; they're simply not as conservative.

The rest of the Republican senators range from very conservative to extreme Right Wingers (and the spectrum doesn't end there) to radical nut cases.

I think that generally, the Democratic party has moved to the right on economic issues since the early 1960s, and that your average Democrat may be more conservative on issues such as taxation--if you look at the tax code from the 1950s and early sixties, the top marginal tax rate was more than 75% I think, and it's hard to imagine today's Democrats pushing for tax rates like that for the wealthiest Americans.

On the other hand, there used to be a lot of conservative Democrats from the south--dixiecrats--but their numbers have thinned considerably since the 1960s. I think that this is what Hatch is talking about.

Of course there's little moderates and liberals in the GOP. How many Republicans can one name that support the health care plan? It's not hard to imagine how that polarized most of the Republicans to the far right.

I really wish we could move away from this label first solve problem second mentality. If congress would just focus on identifying the problem, analyzing it, and coming up with a solution they'd get more done. Instead, they spend too much time labeling each other as liberal, conservative, far-right, progressive, etc. After that they all start behaving according to the perceived characteristics of their "group". Completely dysfunctional.

Hatch is really confused here and not just about Ben Nelson being the only "moderate" (please, you could easily rank a full third of the Dem Senate caucus as moderate and that would probably be a low estimate). Snowe and Collins are not "liberals" by any sense of the word. They are moderates, or at least Snowe is (Collins tends only to be moderate when an election draws near). There are NO liberal Republicans left, period. The Rockerfeller Republicans are all dead and the last vestige of them died when Jim Jeffords switched sides.

Frankly, I have to wonder what Hatch considers "liberal" and "conservative."

I think I kind of get the point Hatch was making - Nelson is the only Democrat who is (at least on some issues) more conservative than the most liberal Republicans in the Senate; Snowe and Collins are the only Republicans who are more liberal (at least on some issues) than the most conservative Democrats in the Senate.

I'm not sure that's really true (there's certainly some pro-life Democrats besides Nelson), but I think that's the idea.