After securing the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Romney continued to run as a centrist, distancing himself from the National Republican Party, supporting the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, favoring campaign spending limits, and advocating the outlawing of Political Action Committees.
Much of Mr. Kerry's speech was a rebuke of Dr. Dean's own attacks on centrists like himself and on Democrats in Congress.
Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, has offered up an interesting explanation for his vote to move forward with debate of major health care legislation: he stopped his fellow Democrats from playing parliamentary hardball that he said would have led to a fast-tracked bill and "sidelined" centrists like himself.
Greg Orman, a wealthy 45-year-old entrepreneur and avowed centrist (he calls himself fiscally conservative but socially tolerant), is challenging the state's senior senator, Pat Roberts, a Republican who has tacked hard right in recent years.
Mr. Dean, who had aligned himself for a time with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, even called himself a "triangulator" in the mold of Bill Clinton.
In politics, too, he considered himself a centrist.
Mr. Spano rejects the label "liberal"; he considers himself a centrist.
Mr. Lazio, 42, said he considered himself "a centrist, a mainstream Republican".
But he also proclaims himself a centrist, and he has promised that he will build on the policies practiced by his predecessor, rather than replace them.
Had Romney not "rebranded" himself a centrist Republican in the last month, this election would have been over long ago in President Obama's favor.
