It’s hard to take liberals like Maher seriously when they say Trump is extreme because to them every Republican is extreme for espousing views that have been part of the GOP platform for a long time. Before he dropped out of the primaries, Marco Rubio was considered a dangerous candidate by the Left because he tried to pass himself off as “moderate.” Salon warned its readers, “This man is a wingnut: Why Marco Rubio is as extreme as the rest of the lot.” Jonathan Chait cautioned that, “being less crazy than Donald Trump does not make Marco Rubio ‘moderate.’”
Whether or not Trump wins the election, in the years to come we can probably look forward to admissions from the likes of Chait and Maher and maybe even the editors at the Times, assuring us that, really, they didn’t mean it about Rubio and the others. They weren’t really extreme.
But the truth is, if you support the core Republican agenda and believe in things like limited government, protections on free speech, and the right to own firearms, liberals think you’re extreme. When they protest that Trump is different, don’t believe it. There are valid reasons Trump might be considered extreme in some respects, but that’s not what liberals mean. They really just mean he’s running on the Republican ticket.
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