You can tell the Republican party has gone off the deep end when even the people it calls its “moderates” are extremists.

Take Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, for instance. She’s often called one of the Republican Party’s “moderates.” Yet in the 109th Congress, Senator Snowe voted twice to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act that lets the government snoop on your legal business without probable cause, but forbids your friends, coworkers or acquaintances from even telling you that the spooks have been asking about you! That’s not moderate; that’s extreme. Or take Snowe’s Senatorial colleague from Maine, Susan Collins. The Republicans are fond of calling Collins a “moderate,” too. But she voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act just like Snowe. And in another episode of marching in step with Snowe and her fellow Senate Republicans, Senator Susan Collins voted to declare that “no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English.” Taking away citizenship rights based on language isn’t a “moderate” act — it’s extremist. Sure, Senators Collins and Snowe smile gently, and they’re very good at having their photographers take their pictures with a soft focus. But when push comes to legislative shove, they’ve marched right along in support of the Republican Party’s anti-constitution, authoritarian agenda.

Let’s not stop there. Let’s consider the man who more than any Republican presidential candidate is called a “moderate” — Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani’s handlers, perhaps thinking they’ve got the nomination in the bag, have been positioning him as the “moderate candidate,” and have the media dancing to the same tune. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post terms Giuliani “by far the most moderate candidate in the field” of Republicans, and that may be true. But just because Rudolph Giuliani may be the most moderate Republican running for President doesn’t mean that Rudolph Giuliani is actually a political moderate.

This past year has seen Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia form an authoritarian alliance that has decided a woman does not have the right to bodily self-determination even when her health is in danger, that racial desegregation is not a compelling American interest, and that while corporations as artificial citizens have an absolute right to free speech, students who are actual citizens do not. Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts have consistently used their positions of authority in defense of the prerogatives of powerful authority figures like themselves and against the liberty of individual citizens. They’re extremists, pushing America away from its basis in liberty and toward the kind of state that Emperor Palpatine would have adored.

Well, guess what. In an essay for Pajamas Media, Republican Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani has made perfectly clear where he stands:

As President, I will nominate strict constructionist judges with respect for the rule of law and a proven fidelity to the Constitution – judges in the mold of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito and Chief Justice Roberts.

That’s right. Even the most “moderate” Republican in the 2008 race is an authoritarian extremist.

(Sources: Library of Congress Voting Records; Washington Post July 10 2007; Supreme Court Decision of Gonzales v. Carhart; National Public Radio June 29 2007; Supreme Court Decision of Morse v. Frederick; Supreme Court Decision of Federal Election Commmission v. Wisconsin Right to Life; Pajamas Media July 18 2007)