Originally Posted by eweissenbach

The thing that drives me crazy, as a moderate, is how our leaders are selected. Basically, the most fanatical, intense, politically tuned in people vote in the primaries. The politicians know this and therefore are aware that in order to survive they must play to that constituency. The voters in the primaries are heavily skewed to the extremes, to the right for the republicans, and to the left for the democrats. So who is most likely to survive the primaries? the most conservative republican and the most liberal democrat. Thus we end up with these ideological extremists governing our country, and we've all seen how well that works.