The difficult life of the moderate

It is not « Trendy » or « cool » to say well of center-right governments. It’s not fashionable. Moderation is a huge most silence that has nothing to say on social networks. What it holds, what it sells and what catches the eye, are short and exclamate phrases that arouse tears or indignation. It is like this in networks and this is so in television comments or opinion articles. We are also like this in the news universe, in the debates between politicians and in almost every public forums. Taxes lower or fall; There are exams or no exams; Open the doors to migrants or must all be deported; gasoline rises or descends; We are against or in favor of euthanasia, abortion or same -sex marriage; We separated the garbage or we do not believe in climate change; We treat dogs as children or we are wild. The discourse or political narrative (as it is now said) in these terms is almost impossible.

In the middle of this Manichean noise are the moderates who are talking alone. And the right -wing moderates even more alone, because the discourse of individual freedom, tolerance, meritocracy, the creation of wealth by private initiative was always difficult to pass. The stigma that the moderate right is privileged, does not want to know of inequalities, which is selfish and individualistic and does not want to know about minorities, are labels that are glued to the skin of each of their interveners. It must seem to be left to make a moderate right -wing speech.

For years it is like this and now it has worsened. With the populist right swimming in the pool of the big ones, the water has become blurred and the moderates are squeezed by both sides, with speeches that are strangely not contradictory. On the left side are less and less moderate politicians – there is still the PS of Francisco Assisi and Sérgio Sousa Pinto, some free hope and nothing more. On the right side, we have ad.

Centro-right parties fight on a mine land: to defend companies and ensure that the state works, betting on public investment but ensuring that taxes do not go up, reform the public administration without touching people, salaries and rights, providing quality but demanding education and being able to respond to everyone; being social without being welfare. That is, to be moderate, pragmatic and rational. Now, if not even in alcohol campaigns, moderation is an easy -to -sell flag, in politics even less. A commentator who praises policies of this moderate direction has to be willing to be accused of being right -wing – a stamp that those who walk on television nobody wants to show on the forehead.

Sérgio Sousa Pinto, a seven -side soor who still resists the defense of the old PS, is today an icon on the right. Nothing could be as stapted as that. What Sérgio Sousa Pinto does on television is to be intellectually honest, otherwise he is very proud. In 2024 we continue to have to look left so that we can be considered moderate. The other problem is that Sound-bytes with the words balance, regular, entrepreneurship do not sell or serve for posters.