Centerfield

At least we can civilly disagree? Personally I spend a lot of my time at sites like yours, places and people with which I disagree. You never know when you might learn something, and, besides, it's a good way to keep your wits sharp. Thanks for the link.

I can certainly respect the Born Again Democrats. After all, I grew up in a household full of Reagan Democrats (what they used to be called) and most of my relatives probably still fall into Luke's group. That said, the dominant centrists today, for demographic reasons, are just the opposite: economically conservative and socially progressive. This is largely due to the population shift from rural areas to cities and suburbs and the economic shift from blue collar to white collar. In fact, I believe that the children of the Reagan Democrats are basically South Park Republicans like myself, and it won't be long before we assert ourselves in the GOP nominating process. Still, I will certainly check out Luke's site.

This isn't really surprising to me. I get the same sense from some of the folks at my church (we're Catholic) -- conservative on cultural issues like abortion and gay rights, but very much interested in whatever social programs can help families or the poor. Very generous on social programs, but conservative on the culture.

I think, politically speaking, that this perspective was expressed by former Gov. of Pennsylvania Bob Casey.

Honestly, my immediate first impression of the idea, before visiting the site, is that it sounded like the worst of both worlds.

I did visit, and skimmed the top 4 or 5 quite lengthy posts. It wasn't anything like what I expected based on the description, which makes me feel like the email misrepresented their ideology. Frankly, it tasted like garden variety modern socialism to me. One idea I saw expressed was that capitalism, while not evil, nevertheless consists in large part of centuries of accumulated crime (plus sacrifice). True or not, that's not the sort of statement I think of as a positive sign for realistic discourse, but rather as a red flag for zealous idealism.

Now I fully grant that I'm cherry-picking. Any characterization I make of the site is based on a tiny sample, so I'm being very upfront about that. I have no interest in a food fight with these guys.

I didn't see anything that qualified as what I'd consider to be socially conservative, unless you count whatever religious doctrines happen to support the kind of ideas you'd see in the daily worker.

Based on a very quick skim which I takes to once again acknowledge may not be representative, I'm not planning to spend any more time on them. It doesn't taste like anything resembling centrism to me. It sounded like the sort of stuff I ran screaming from in graduate school.

I don't see any reason why we'd want to acknowledge this as centrism.

Ask yourself this... Was George Wallace a centrist? Not in my book, but again, I don't think we should be attaching litmus tests to anything.

This is actually quite common, I think. This is typical of "Democrats" in my home state of WV, where Democrats have been solidly in control of most state and federal offices for decades, but you'd be hard pressed to find one who is pro-choice, for example (at least openly).

I think of it as bizarro centrism, the same but the opposite (like Bizarro Superman). In my mind, it is, as bk said, the "worst of both worlds."

I don't mean this as an attack on Luke or any other "Born Again Democrats," I just disagree with them on many, many things.

This just goes to show the limits of the one dimensional left-right axis. I don't want to be clique-y, but I won't be adding Born Again Democrats to our blogroll. I don't dispute their right to call themselves centrist or moderate--we don't own a monopoly on that. But they're not our kind of centrists, and to embrace them would mean we would lose all sense of focus.

The usual terminology I've heard is to break centrism itself into two camps:
- "sensible" centrists, who are economic conservatives and social liberals (associated with Avlon's Vital Center).
- "radical" centrists, who are more socially conservative but economically progressive (a la Mark Satin's Radical Middle)
That said, the extreme form of the prior is Libertarian, and the latter is Authoritarian, which might be a better label for groups like B.A.D. These labels can be useful starting points, but we should avoid over-generalizing.

I like identifying the schism as between libertarian centrists and authoritartan centrists much better.

Sensible centrists vs. radical centrists seems both judgemental and misleading. In the context of the current times, I think it's more uncommon and radical to suggest stressing data-driven critical thinking and bridging political polarization than it is to complain that capital is stored crime.

OK so I can complete my grid and understand the other two cubbie holes to put people in, what are we calling folks who are liberal economically and liberal socially? And what about those who are conservative socially and fiscally? Please answer quickly and so I can once for all put everyone/everything in its place. I hate gray; I need black and white!!!

I glanced through some of the posts and I think the blog is hard to characterize. It's certainly to the left on economics, but seems to be more moderate or even conservative on cultural issues. I think its the tone of the posts, rather than the content, that seems to offend people here. I'm not sure why centrists HAVE to be conservative economically. Who said a centrist can't advocate some degree of government intervention to reduce some degree of economic inequality. Now, you can argue as to whether partiuclar policies are likely to work or are counterproductive, but I don't see any inherent reason that centrists can't advocate a more liberal economic policy.

Well, I think "economically conservative" is a littl overbroad. I think the term that better encompasses centrist policy in this case is "fiscally responsible."

I think almost all of us resonate to the idea that you spend within your means, invest carefully and wisely in those things that seem most important, and think about what the best thing to do is if there's a little left over.

I might be a little bit "economically progressive" if i felt that the government was acting responsibly by meeting all its obligations without borrowing too much, and that there was money left over _AND_ the tax burden wasn't too high. But we're so far from that place, which sounds like an unachievable utopia to me, that it's not on the table.

So i think our commonality on economics is narrower than liberal vs. conservative...but that this is being obscured a little bit because we're all so far from thinking spending a lot more on any new social programs is any kind of realistic option over the near term.

With the current budget deficit and the growing SS and medicare problems, it HAS to be about whittling right now, doesn't it?

But the question is who is going to bear the burden of the whittling? I agree that we need to be fiscally responsible but cutting social programs for the poor (or even the middle class) seems like a poor way to go about it. I certainly think, at the very least, that this is an area open for discussion. I'm not sure why centrists have to have a totally unified stance on these issues. For example, if I believe that the government should intervene to help the uninsured, does that mean I can't be a centrist? Maybe I might believe in cutting the military budget and/or repealing the tax cuts to fund social spending. The point is, I don't see that this is out-of-bounds for centrists unless you think we should all walk in lockstep. I just don't see why we have to assume that fiscal responsibility necessarily requires that we ignore social problems.

I just don't see why we have to assume that fiscal responsibility necessarily requires that we ignore social problems.

Me neither, I don't think that. I just think it means we have to pick our policies wisely, and do so with the realization that our means are limited. That's just being responsible. IMO that view makes no comment whatsoever on the merits of which things get subsidized by the gov't.

To me, that means under the current circumstances we wouldn't consider any new programs that dealt with problems less serious than ones we already were spending money on. So I'd lean towards continuing to fund welfare and food stamps for the hungry that couldn't afford to pay rent, over say, starting a new program to help finance college ed costs. (which BTW I think should always be done via loans, and tax credits, not grants) Any new program that was proposed couldn't be enacted unless the funding were balanced out by cuts elsewhere.