Independents does not equal moderates

Rush Limbaugh seems to think that Independents and moderates are essentially the same. 
Here is what he recently stated from two of his radio shows:

After doing that, then they'd have to moderate a bit in directions away from the base to pick up, say, the precious independents and moderates.  Now if you've listened to me regularly, you know that I think this is a giant trick or trap that has been played on Republicans for I don't know how long, because what it in effect did was create Republican candidacies which were designed to appeal to only 20% of the electorate, while the Democrats were out running candidacies aiming at everybody, as many people as they could. 
...
"You need me because I am uniquely qualified, I'm uniquely capable, I'm uniquely talented to show independents why you're the man.  So a candidate would be presented with a campaign that took the base for granted, and it was aimed at independents (i.e., moderates) or even liberals.  Is it any wonder Republican candidates would lose in that scenario, because what happened is, the base was taken for granted, and as is the case in 2012, four million of 'em stayed home and didn't vote for Romney. 
 I don't know if it's because they were angry at being taken for granted and decided to teach a lesson, or if they were just unenthused by the Romney candidacy.  It could have been a combination of many things.  But the bottom line is, four million members of the Republican base didn't vote.  It didn't matter.  Romney did win the independents.  Do you remember this?  In 2012, Mitt Romney won the independents going away -- it wasn't even close -- and that used to be the rubric. That used to be what you had to do. 

 http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/12/04/jeb_bush_falls_for_old_trick



And, ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned this, too, we had to edit some of this for time. The 2012 presidential race, Romney lost that race while winning the vast majority of independents.  That's another trick that's played.  You Republicans, you better win the independents, you don't have a chance.  Well, he went out, he campaigned for the independents all right, and he got the vast majority of them, but four million of his own voters stayed home, four million! Four million Republicans stayed home.  The people that vote Republican are tired of the Republican Party not listening.  

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/12/08/my_response_to_myself_as_the_news
 
   
 
  
However, Independents does not equal moderates.  A lot of Conservatives over the last several years have been becoming Independents, and they don't consider themselves Republicans anymore. This is the main reason that according to exit polls that Romney won the Independent vote by 5% while losing the moderate vote by about 15%.
  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012#Voter_demographics

http://www.gallup.com/poll/166763/record-high-americans-identify-independents.aspx



And I have already refuted Rush Limbaugh's false election analysis of Romney losing because four million "of 'em" stayed home.     

http://brack-thethoughtsofchris.blogspot.com/2014/04/rush-limbaugh-is-wrong-on-why-romney.html

http://brack-thethoughtsofchris.blogspot.com/2014/12/rush-limbaugh-continues-to-be-wrong-on.html