Political foes are not 'enemies' | Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald

What a sad, frustrating development in both our language and our politics. Like "liberal" in the past, now "moderate" has become a dirty word to the U.S. Republican Party. And political "opponents" must now be "enemies."

Pitts writes:

[I]t is the GOP that has abandoned the center and embraced ideological extremism as a virtue. It is telling to hear its candidates use 'moderate' as an epithet and argue over who is the most 'conservative,' as if the word contained some pixie dust of common sense and moral rectitude. It is sobering to realize that Ronald Reagan, patron saint of modern conservatism, would be unelectable by the standards thereof: he raised taxes and was known to compromise with political opponents — not 'enemies' — to get things done.