Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times - the reporter who refused to release the Obama/Khalidi tape (also here) - gleefully offers "Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme/The Republican establishment hopes cooler heads will prevail over strongly anti-Obama parts of the conservative base" (link). In this case, Wallsten is what's called a "concern troll", and he's got some help.

Those weighing in on the side of pearl-clutching, intellectually-dishonest respectability include David Frum (former George W Bush speechwriter) and Michael Goldfarb (former spokesman for the McCain campaign).

Another is Jon Henke of TheNextRight (more about them later; for now see my comments here):

One WorldNetDaily article, which Henke called “hideously embarrassing” to conservatives, said that a Democratic proposal to create civilian emergency centers at military installations "appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany."

Henke said, "There is a substantial discomfort among the people who want to make intellectual arguments and want to have a substantive role in the debate." He compared the Obama birth theorists to those who said Obama's healthcare overhaul would create "death panels."

" 'Death panels' is not a substantive contribution to the discussion. It's a cartoon," he said.

Farah mocked Henke and other critics in a column this month, saying they were doing liberals' bidding.

Indeed. And, in addition to alienating those who want the truth about the Obama citizenship issue - including a good portion of the readers of HotAir and Freerepublic - it's good to see Henke extending his outreach to supporters of Sarah Palin. While Obama healthcare doesn't include anything formally named "death panels", any time there are limited resources there will be some form of rationing, resulting in the same impact. See this from Michelle Malkin, and see also "Senate committee scraps healthcare provision that gave rise to 'death panel' claims/Though the claims are widely discredited, the Senate Finance Committee is withdrawing from its bill the inclusion of advance care planning consultations, calling them too confusing" from the LAT (link). Just as in this other case, a "fact" that was promulgated by the mainstream media and the Democrats turned out not to be a fact at all. The so-called "moderates" would have let the MSM and the Democrats get away with it; it took an apparent "fringe" person like Palin to bring it to light and force action. The "moderates" would have helped Obama and the Democrats; the "fringe" took them on. Now, that doesn't mean that everything the "fringe" says is accurate, but the smarter way to handle things is for those who are punctilious about the truth to explain what's true and what's not without attempting any purges. Needless to say, the "moderates" aren't smart enough to do that.

For some of those who agree with Frum, Goldfarb, and Henke, see this. Those Obama supporters who are also "concerned" that the GOP needs to rein in their extremists include Washington Monthly, Pandagon, The "Moderate" Voice, "The Mahablog", and Dave Weigel of the George Soros-funded Washington Independent. Henke, Frum, and Goldfarb are helping them and the LAT rather than taking them on.

Regarding the "emergency centers", here's the smart way to discuss that issue.

And, while Jerome Corsi and WorldNetDaily occasionally get their facts or conclusions wrong, they're in general an invaluable resource for Obama opponents and those who oppose things such as massive/illegal immigration and steps towards a North American Union. Without their attention to the latter, attempts to "harmonize" things between the three countries might be further along than they are now. And, note also that Corsi was one of the main targets of the Obama campaign; they went as far as silently editing one of his quotes in an attempt to make him look bad.

The choice for Republicans doesn't have to be between the wimpy elite RINOs and the True Conservative "fringe". Someone who holds truly moderate positions could help the GOP and could effectively oppose the Democrats. The issue is that the word "moderate" is defined by the MSM and the Democrats, and in the case of GOP leaders it generally includes someone who helps the MSM and the Democrats, as can be seen above.

UPDATE: In comments, someone says that Lyndon LaRouche was the first to come up with the "death panels" claim. If that person is her, get in touch for free deprogramming. If the person is another Larouche supporter, maybe you're right; I'm not going to bother looking into the timeline. If the person left that message in an attempt to portray Palin as "fringe" in the LaRouchian style, no sale. If LaRouche says the sky is blue, I'm not going to say it's green just because I feel some need to always disagree with everything he says or because I want others to see me disagreeing with him.

Also, it's worth recalling a couple of the other "moderate" positions offered by the MSM and their allies: pandering to the National Council of La Raza and supporting comprehensive immigration reform, aka amnesty. Neither are in any way moderate despite being sold as such by the MSM.