Centerfield

I'm glad Dionne didn't say that "moderates are revolting."

I think there's some truth to what he's said. I'm quite negative on the Republicans, but not convinced the Democrats represent a palatable alternative. I think there is room for a centrist movement, but so far, nobody with money is investing in it.

If and until a 3rd party candidate wins, the argument by naysayers will always be, like Nyhan's, the somehow ironclad contention that past results are a guarantee of future performance. Big deal.

Maybe "same as it ever was" is the truth, but I think that there definitely IS a genuine reservoir of dissatisfaction (on the part of everyday-joe pragmatic moderates) with the very partisans that Nyhan insists must drive and always will drive electoral dynamics. What Nyhan is dismissing is the very possibility that a new form of partisanship could be forming, the essence of which is, I guess, anti-partisanship.

In other words, Nyhan dismisses the notion that a partisanship could form that is against politics as driven by uncompromising ideology. But it makes sense to me that this is at least possible, despite the fact that it hasn't happened yet. After all, pragmatism is driven by compromise and the drive to reach decisions that allow for some form of progress instead of endless re-hashing and stalemate. Nyhans's argument is solely that it hasn't happen before, and his supposed proof is that poly-sci students have named a law after this phenomenon. The real question then, is whether or not this Duverger's law is really a law, or just a name they have given to describe a tendency which may or may not always hold sway. And if this "anti-partisan partisanship" really is a form of partisanship, then the trend that Nyhan so blithely dismisses could in fact occur within the confines of his precious law.

I am very skeptical that any third party with staying power will arise any time in the next 50 years. "Run to the middle" is not exactly a rousing battlecry. For a party to be successful, it must have a large bunch of people who give it visceral support. Getting that kind of visceral support means finding some core priciples that really stir things up, that people can really get into and feel that they must protect at all costs. Centrists don't currently offer that, and I think they can only do so by becoming as dogmatic as the other parties, which of course would defeat the whole purpose.

I think centrism would be much better off as a movement without a party (maintaining influence through PACs and endorsements and campaign help for moderate and insightful candidates regardless of party) which strives to promote its central tenets with members of both parties. Tell people, you can be a Republican or a Democrat, and be a centrist at the same time! Then you can focus fund-raising and get out the vote efforts to promote the moderate members of each party who so many agree get short shrift today.

P.S. The above description of the necessities for a political party refers to parties as they exist today. For my thoughts on what they mean today as opposed to what they used to mean (like patronage), see my post here.

I am shocked, shocked, to discover the rick does not like Republicans. Even more (really) shocking is that he has doubts about Democrats. Must be the one issue of secularism (like the old Dixiecrats) that he can’t abide. Based on the comments from his fellows on this blog he must have ramrodded through his version of the group’s first policy statement. Tully and William seem to be centrists. Rick seems to be sort of like his buddy RINO, who is a liberal wolf in centrist sheep’s clothing. NYT, MSM and all. Rick talks the talk of a centrist, but so far his walk (the policy statement)…….well let me just say that I believe that if he chose a name for the new third party it would be the Centrocrats.

Notherbob2,

Actually, I didn't have a hand in the policy statement on judicial filibusters. Didn't write a word of it. I was busy with other projects. William and a number of others on the Yahoo discussion group came up with it.

As I've said before, the Republicans are my target because they're in power. They set the agenda. If the Democrats were in power, and were pushing things like gender pay equity, in which the wages earned in fields dominated by men and those dominated by women were equalized regardless of market demand, I'd be squawking abou them.

Yes, I link to the NY Times. Biased or not, it has the most in depth coverage of any source.

I just got linked on New Donkey

NotherBob's comments are a prime example of why personalizing politics to the extent we do today is a waste of time, not to mention self-defeating. I often disagree with Rick, and when I do I say so. And the debate which ensues helps flesh out the actual issues on which we need to make decisions. Calling Rick a DICC (Democrat in Centrist Clothing) adds nothing to any debate at all. It doesn't help convince anybody that NotherBob's positions are correct or that Rick's are wrong.

Take the debate in the other thread about filibusters. Talking about the issues helped everybody understand better what was going on, and it clearly had an impact on William and others, who I think realized they may have been a little too one-sided in the press release. Now imagine that the whole debate on that thread started out by calling William a DICC, whose sole purpose in the release was to give aid and comfort to the Dems. One, that would have been wrong (I disagree with William's release but certainly don't doubt his motives) and two, it would have kept us from making progress on the substance of the issue. Plus, it probably would have made William take a very defensive stance, rather than the open hearing he actually gave to the dissenting opinions.

By the way, kudos to you, Rick, for such a calm and dispassionate reply to NotherBob.

its certainly possible that a far left splt into the Green party could make the Democratic Party the centrist party moderates are looking for.

Dione's and to some degree the others does what I've seen so much before. They see "Centrist" politics as a zero sum game and therefore the analysis is who's getting what voters from the other party. That a "two party" view of centrism. I'd much rather have a "non party" view of centrism meaning what are the issues of centrism, who are they voting for and oh by the way what are their Party affiliations. Again we want to cover politics as sport (i.e. who's winning, who's losing)

I think you'll find that too many people lack confidence in a 3rd party to be effective enough to make changes, let alone win much in any election. Rather what we'll see are some party defections and a shift in the voting patterns of moderate independents. I don't know about you guys but the past 2 years I've about friends and acquaintances switching from GOP to Dem. I've yet to hear the opposite in movement of voters. That's only, mind you, personal experience, but when a lifelong Republican tells you she's had it...I think the 2006 elections, if the black box voting machines aren't screwed with, will have some unpleasant surprises for the GOP. Santorum is already
14 pts behind Casey in PA.

Nice job, Phil, irresponsible commenters have to be controlled or the whole comment thread will descend into name calling. Rick is the editor, is he not? That is The Man in this context, is it not? The buck stops here, etc? If I had it in for Rick I could complain that he did not do his job as editor. Not the case. Presumably the heat and kitchen thing deserves mention. BTW let the record show that I am NOT the first commenter to call Rick a DICC. Good audition as The Enforcer. If it were up to me you get the job.

I wrote a post awhile back on the subject, my two cents on why political dynamics appear to have been against third parties ever since democracy was invented, except replacing one of the Big Two.

It's at http://www.centristcoalition.com/blog/archives/000514.html

The Athenians also usually had parties of the rich and of the people. In Parliamentary democracies, you have coalitions that amount to the same thing (Tories and Labour, anybody?).

Rick is the editor, is he not? That is The Man in this context, is it not? The buck stops here, etc? If I had it in for Rick I could complain that he did not do his job as editor.

Rick started this site and maintains it. I have been one of the primary bloggers on this site for quite a while, and have never been edited, muzzled, or even politely requested to moderate my writing. We operate by mutual respect. Rick and I disagree quite often, and by talking (and yes, arguing) about the details of those disagreements we come closer to core issues and workable approaches.

I'm always amused to watch people try to define centrism. It isn't standing on the center line of the political highway, waiting for a partisan eighteen-wheeler to swerve a bit and make a lumpy wet smear out of you. It isn't robotically "splitting the difference" between the partisan fundamentalisms of the extremes. Andrew Sullivan still labels all Republicans as conservatives, but if you substitute "liberals" in the passage below, I believe these thoughts of his have relevance to both sides of the debate, and to the nature of centrism:

A conservative of doubt, however, does not regard the existence of such pluralism as a problem. He sees it as an unavoidable fact of modernity, an invitation to lives that are more challenging and autonomous than in more traditional societies. Even when conservatives of doubt disagree with others' moral convictions, they recognize that, in a free, pluralist society, those other views deserve a hearing...putting government power unequivocally on the side of one view of morality--especially in extremely controversial areas--must always be balanced against the rights and views of citizens who dissent...doubt, in other words, means restraint. And restraint of government is the indispensable foundation of human freedom.

I'm personally looking to a Whig/GOP model for the future where an established party collapses and a new party rises in its stead, absorbing many elements of the moribund party but defining itself by new issues. I think we can all guess that the Dems are closer to collapse, but a new party built on the wreckage could draw a lot of Reps. We'd have a three or even four party system only in the short run, and eventually, back to just two. Going into the Civil War we had Northern Dems, Southern Dems, Reps, Whig remnants, the Know Nothings and some other scattered bits and pieces. We ended up back at two.

Rather than look at this strictly as a question of what positions define a Centrist, maybe we can think in terms of groups of voters who are unhappy with their current affiliation and might like a new and more congenial home.

Pro-life Dems and Pro-choice Reps, for example, are excluded from the life of their respective parties. It seems odd, I admit, to think of uniting a group described as pro-life with one described as pro-choice, but I suspect that these two groups are essentially moderates on the issue of abortion. To whit (I love any excuse to say 'to whit') Reps who are pro-choice but accept some limits, and Dems who are pro-life but understand that regulation rather than prohibition is the practical maximum they can acheive.

To personalize it, I suspect you could get pro-life Dem Harry Reid and pro-choice Rep Chris Shays to sit down and work out a pragmatic abortion policy. That area of pragmatism is Centrism.

How we build a party I'll be f----- if I know, but there's no question in my mind that we have a potential membership out there, hungry, yearning, waiting for a sign.

I must say I've seen Conservatives get taken to task for not being conservative enough, and liberals with not being a liberal enough, but this is the first time I've seen someone being accused of faking his centrist credentials. Which is comical because I've yet seen any thorough definition of what centrism is.

The 'Democrat in centrist's clothing' is especially puzzling. Does one's party negate one's political idealogy? Especially as it seems that most centrists, self defined or otherwise, reside or identify with the Democratic party, the same way most libertarians reside in or identify with the Republican party.

Be darned, Wikipedia has us listed as a "radical centrist" site. Fair enough, I guess.

Hey, Epitome, if you can define it, I bet we can all chime in and disagree! :-) Centrism is more defined by what it is not than by what it is. So my take is entirely my own, but....

Centrism represents a rejection of the dogmatic ideologies of the partisan extremes in favor of objective reality-based approaches that emphasize both individual rights and liberty and shared community values in attempting to achieve a balance of maximum good for both the citizen and the society. It is a process of seeking practical and effective solutions that work in a pluralistic society with minimal disruption of the rights and freedoms of the citizens. It is in part related to the "Third Way" concept that seeks to scavenge the best parts of both capitalism and socialism while avoiding the worst features of either. By nature, centrism is more applied process than ideology.

Aboslutely everyone's mileage will vary.

Well written, Tully. But we need at some point to be able to put it on a bumper sticker. Maybe we should have a contest. See who can define centrism in just a few words. Here's some:

Centrism = What Works
Centrists Get It Done
Centrism: No More Idiotlogues
It's Real in the Center

What Tully said, as usual...

But I do want to take slight umbrage at the term "idiotlogue" in the proposed bumper stickers.

There is a time and place for ideology. Ideologies can change the course of history for the better, as well as for the worse. And the clash of competing ideologies can lead to new and previously unseen truths. And as I have noted before "To the middle!" is just not a very compelling rallying cry for most people.

Moreover, even in the most rational of debates, some decisions come down to first principles which stem from God, or natural law, or your own moral predispositions. Rationality cannot help us with those basic axioms. You can't "prove" that 2+1=1+2, you must just accept it on faith.

So the problem is not with ideology per se but the extremes to which it is taken today, and the extent to which it has come to purely define the differences between the parties. I have argued here that the problem with politics is that it has become the new religion, valued by many because it provides not patronage jobs or simple public policy, but a whole belief system.

I guess you could call me a conservative democrat or a liberal to moderate republican. I don't believe that a centrist party would work due to the fact that the other two parties would wage war against it and plus they have the most money. My suggestion would be for the moderates or centrists in both parties get together and sponsor legislation that has a "center-out" belief. That is sometimes you have to move a little to the right or left to get get something passed. Al from the New Democrat organization (www.ndol.org) has it right; no party has a claim to all of the best ideas. Let's get motivated Moderates!!!!!