Amen, Sister

Even someone at WaPo gets it:

Overuse of the essentially meaningless word "moderate" has become a blight on American political and religious discourse.

[...]

On one level, the promiscuous use of the word "moderate" is nothing more than an abbreviation, born of the need of both print and television media to use one word instead of 10. Thus, moderate becomes a label that makes it unnecessary to spell out what the person in question really thinks.

On a deeper level, though, the mindless moderate label facilitates avoidance of thinking...

The constant use of the word "moderate" begs the fundamental question, "Moderate in relation to whom or what?"...

Are Representatives Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine moderate Republicans--that is what they are always called by the media--because they didn't reject Democratic Obama's health care reform proposals at the outset of the process even though they voted with their party at the end?