Are Moderates Overrated?

Shafer makes the case:

For decades, pundits and politicians complained that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two main political parties. Now that there’s a nickel’s worth of difference, they want to reverse the 50 years of ongoing realignment of the two parties, both of which once contained liberals, moderates and conservatives, into two parties, one of mostly liberals and the other of mostly conservatives.