Political Parties
Righty: The Republican Party is far from perfect, but who else will defend our nation against Islamic terrorists, atheists, Communists, abortionists, antiwar traitors, militant minorities, gays and Barack Hussein Obama?
Lefty: The Democratic Party is far from perfect, but who else will defend our nation against greedy capitalists, warmongers, gun nuts, pro-lifers, despoilers of the environment, fundamentalist Christian fanatics and Sarah Palin?
The New Moderate:
You might be surprised to learn (or maybe not) that our Constitution made no provision for political parties. George Washington was elected president twice without opposition — not necessarily a good thing, though in his case The New Moderate will make an exception. The two-party system arose only when Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist faction (favoring strong central government and urban middle-class interests) decided to duke it out with Jefferson’s anti-Federalist faction (favoring the rights of the individual states and agrarian interests). The music went ’round and ’round, and it came out here: with two deeply entrenched, staunchly opposed factions that have pretty much forgotten what they disagree about. They just know that disagreement is essential to their existence, comparable to the eternal dispute over whether toilet paper should be installed so you pull it over or under the roll. Sometimes it seems that our two parties exist primarily to create legislative logjams in the halls of Congress.
Their roles, like just about everything in the past, used to be more clear-cut. Republicans were the party of the elite, representing private enterprise and minimal government; Democrats used to protect the rights of labor and the common man. Today your typical Democrat is a well-heeled, well-educated atheist snob from San Francisco, while the representative Republican is a corn-fed lower-middle class Christian who hails from the Bible Belt. Yet Democrats still embrace impoverished people of color, while bank presidents still vote Republican. Go figure.
Does anyone have a clear notion of what our two parties stand for these days? Righty and Lefty have given you some idea. But both parties are timid, mealy-mouthed, and beholden to the lobbyists who grab their ears and ply them with the promise of favors. Both parties still covet the vast, voiceless moderate vote that would propel them to power. Yet neither party represents the middle.
The New Moderate used to wonder if we’d be better off without political parties at all, since they’ve devolved into petty, disputatious factions without any underpinnings of real principle. Why not just vote for the best candidate and shun party politics altogether? But I’ve concluded that parties are a necessary evil: they offer rising political stars the financial and organizational support they need to conduct their campaigns, and they contribute to the ideological tug of war that keeps our political debates lively. Unity is nice when you can get it, but universal assent would be deadening. Even The New Moderate confesses that we need to hear extremist dogma from both sides, if only so we can sift through it, reject the rubbish and formulate our own beautifully reasoned centrist opinions. I just wish the debate were more intelligent and less informed by the expediencies of electoral politics. Oh, and one more thing…
This country is overdue for a new and powerful centrist alternative to dueling Democrats and Republicans. The United States desperately needs a moderate party to represent the vast and sensible middle, whose vote everyone covets but whose interests few have been willing to represent. The new party would operate without favoritism toward the rich or poor, without special-interest agendas, without connections to lobbying groups.
This moderate party (do we call ourselves the Purples?) would erode the Republican base by luring middle-class voters with traditional middle-of-the-road social and economic views… establishment voters who have grown disgusted with obscenely overpaid CEOs and their cronies secretly collaborating with the ruling class on our next national misadventure. It would eat into the Democratic base by grabbing moderate-liberal voters who can’t identify with the sniffish sensibilities and shrill rhetoric of the typical Left Coast liberal. It would be a populist party without rabid demagogues… a middle-of-the-road party without complacency… and above all a party that strives to tell the truth, without euphemisms or political spin, because it has nothing to hide from its potential voter base. It would actually improve the Republican and Democratic parties by forcing them to be true to their roots rather than compromise their principles to win moderate votes. The new party would be winning those votes, of course. I think its success would be as desirable as a happy marriage, as essential as breathing and almost as inevitable as a white Christmas in Lapland. The red and the blue have dominated our politics long enough. It’s time to march for Purple Power! Any volunteers?
Summary: Political parties are a necessary evil. We desperately need a new moderate party in the U.S. to combat the corruption and polarizing influence of the Republicans and Democrats.
THE NEW MODERATE 
Another nice solution would be completely publicly funded elections. Every candidate gets the same amount of money with which to campaign and outside organizations are required to clearly state exactly who they are when running ads for or against candidates.
This would make it so everyone starts with a level playing field from communists to fascists and everyone in between. Then they’d have to compete on (gasp) the merits of their ideas rather than how much money they can raise. It would also insure that outside organizations can’t run anonymous attack ads where they make outlandish claims and hide out of sight. Corporations might especially baulk at funding commercials with false claims in them if they knew their names would be on the ads.
Naturally the Supreme Court in it’s wisdom put a stop to this nonsensical idea long before it got a chance to get it’s pants on. The Supreme Court says that money = speech. Therefore any attempts to curb the influence of money in elections is interpreted as an attempt to curb speech and thus unconstitutional.
Now I don’t want to say that our court could be susceptible to bribery, but a ruling like that makes you wonder a little. . .
The moderate party should be called the “Moderate Party”, not the Purples or whatever.
I have a website. It is http://www.weneedamoderateparty.com/
I agree
This link doesn’t work-at least on IPhone iOS8
Does not work on driod either
I think all the political parties and their candidates including those in office should stand out on the street with the homeless who they created with their tax laws and other laws and panhandle for their campaign money – but they would probably pay someone to give them a large check an be off the street in 10 minutes and back in the govt offices creating more laws to subject the rest of us to.
Michelangelo:
RE: “This would make it so everyone starts with a level playing field from communists to fascists and everyone in between.”
Commies and Fascists are essentially all leftist totalitarians. which is the area of the spectrum Bernie wants to lead us toward. How about we include the other end of the scale as well…Anarchists and libertarians represent the far right in contrast. The MIDDLE of the spectrum include such groups as progressives, moderates, and conservatives, (and formerly “liberals”, which the left has stolen from the right, as usual) . Even more important right now, how about we educate ourselves as to the real positions of our candidates, review their track records, investigate what the real nature of such climes as socialism look like, and get the “liberal” media out of the primary election process so we can have a real debate on the real issues facing our once greatest nation? Progressives have the same destination in mind as the “democratic socialists” just with a slower train to get there.Conservatives put the brakes on the libertarians, and Moderates ore all over the mat. Sure, we need to be reasonable, however, we also need to know exactly where our officials stand before we vote them into office. Mainly, we must not be lazy about our civil responsibilities; dig in and get the real info, and let’s all use our own brains and minds to discern for ourselves, rather than indulge the media and powers that be. If this is our republic, then damn it, let’s act like it. Conservatism is centrism by definition. CONSERVE the CONSTITUTION!!! It is what made us greatest among the nations and caused all nations to be lifted up!!! Limited government serving a virtuous people. Conservatives are the moderates, dead set between fascists and anarchists.
Ridiculous drivel. Fascists and reactionary parties like Hitler’s are generally considered far right wing, not left. Furthermore, just because you move a little left doesn’t mean your goal is communism. Slippery slope arguments are a logical fallacy.
Hey, sorry so long to reply, but, well, I got busy with other things. First, I would have to disagree with the claim that Hitler was a far-right amti-government guy, that is, he and his brownshirts controlling the masses in a tyrannical government of their own design. That being said, I hope you’re satisfied with the outcome of the 2020 election which should put us pretty deep into the lefty realm of socialist hell, strip more of our freedoms, and drive the cost of pretty much everything sky-high. The way our government has spent us into debt the last 30 years is unconscionable. If oil can be traded in any other monetary system but the dollar, we are freaking toast, all of us pretty much destitute in the world market reality. Welcome to the beginning of the end. Progressivism leads to Socialism, which leads to Communism. Each are the stepping-stone to the next. None of these have ever been as good as capitalism, which in some ways, still sucks. In the ideal world, Jesus is in charge, and since He is God, all bow to His heart, preferring to love one another, and Him, living in peace and harmony. But, since mankind is inherently evil (watch any two-year-old long enough), social constructs requiring law enforcement regarding moral tenets instituted by God are quite necessary. This is why I prefer to keep government out of my religious life (not the other way around), preferring a level of self-governance which is lost on a godless society. At any rate, God Bless you, and I pray for your well-being.
I have thought along similar lines. Also require debates be covered without private funding. No advertisements.
Both parties are essentially run by the rich. I wonder who is more laudable, the Republicans, obvious in their greed, or the seemingly well wishing but inept Democrats? My solution is no permanent parties. ALL independents, with no fanatical base to rile up, (Republicans) so they actually, brace for this, have to campaign on issues. See my LOBBYING post for funding ideas.
” The United States desperately needs a moderate party to represent the vast and sensible middle, whose vote everyone covets but whose interests few have been willing to represent.” The problem is our plurality voting system, which strongly discourages new parties. There is a group that calls themselves the Modern Whig Party, which is, I think, pretty close to what you’re looking for. Will they win any election this year? I strongly doubt it. They are hardly even able to field any CANDIDATES. Unless we adopt a different voting system — proportional representation or Range Voting (a/k/a Score Voting) no new party, centrist or otherwise, has a chance.
I still like a lot of your idead, however.
Bruce: I’ve read about the Modern Whigs. They managed to score some prominent press coverage, and I like their platform, but I don’t know about their chances, either. (Their name certainly doesn’t help; the old Whigs didn’t exactly give us our most distinguished presidents, though I think Henry Clay was a Whig.) One good sign is that they’re absorbing other centrist parties; we had too many of them, and none of them had any prospects. I hope they’ll change their name at some point.
The way for the new party to gain some momentum is to woo established candidates who can no longer win their own primaries because they’re considered RINOs (or DINOs). The problem is that a lot of those rejected candidates (Arlen Specter, Mike Castle, etc.) are so wedded to the establishment that they won’t accomplish the goals of more “radical” centrists (like me): to break the power of special-interest lobbies over our elected representatives, to reform Wall Street and corporate America so that they no longer aid the cause of plutocracy, and to enforce reasonable immigration policies.
We need some visionaries in our camp… people who are willing to propose radical reforms in pursuit of a more just and balanced government (and society).
In my view the Democrats have abandoned the centrists formerly known as the DLC and the Republicans are growing very weary of the fringe far right wing of their party. Therefore I would love to see the Republican party divorce itself from the fringe right and seize the moderate center and become America’s true center-right party. Let the far right form their own third party. There are lots of moderates and independents who would join a Republican party once the radical right wing was gone from it.
Anonymous, while there is some merit to your statement about the Republican party, the problem with BOTH parties is that they are each controlled by moneyed interests and do NOT represent the average voters. My view of a moderate party is one that is beholden to NO special interest group and applies pragmatic, common-sense solutions that often are the result of COMPROMISE so that there is a win-win rather than the “winner takes all” mentality that has bogged down our government for so many years now. One of the best ways to limit our involvement in fighting wars is by ensuring that EVERYONE has a personal stake in any wars we engage in–compulsory military service for ALL American citizens (male and female) with NO exemptions except legitimate medical or mental health issues that would prevent them from doing so. That alone would change our foreign policy approach that has not served our nation all that well.
Compromise and moderation do not mean the same.
Yes, Henry Clay was a Whig, and so was Daniel Webster. So they couldn’t come up with winning Presidential candidates, and the two times they won, by nominating military heroes, both of their Presidents died before they could do much. (You can’t really blame them for Tyler or Fillmore; they were only VPs that succeeded to the Presidency on the death of Harrison and Taylor.)
Also, however, the Whig party produced our greatest President. Lincoln had joined the new Republican party by the time of his election, but beforehand he had always considered himseld a Whig in the spirit of Henry Clay. Bt the latter years, however, the Whigs had split over the slavery question, and their “Conscience” wing, which I assume included Lincoln, had joined the new Republican party while the remaining ones, termed the “Cotton Whigs,” kept trying to reconcile with the South, mainly, as the nickname implied, because of commercial reasons.
But I too think the MWP’s choice of a name was curious — as I’ve said on my blog.
It is hard for a new party to get started and recognized. Breaking the strangle hold of our two main parties will be extremely difficult, next to impossible. But I, also, would like to see it happen. Also, no party voting could work. And can we get candidates to start talking honestly about the Long Term Solutions…Most of our nation’s problems require long-term solutions, not quick fixes. Politicians like to talk about quick fixes to get elected but never the realistic and necessary long term fix. When will they start planning ahead? Our infrastructure is crumbling because no one planned ahead for routine repairs. We are about to run out of fuel and I don’t hear any of them planning ahead for replacement alternatives. I would vote for someone who was planning ahead even if the necessary plan was a little “unpleasant” or “unpalatable” as pundits would call it. Let’s get our country fixed and then get that deficit down! Our current two parties have no interest in doing this. We desperately need new voices. I am staining to hear them. New party or independent.
Hi all. I apologize for not finding your site sooner. I hope to draw your attention to the work the National Centrist Party is doing to establish the very party you speak of. We have had a good start, doubling in size each of the first five months to 160, which is both terrific and pathetic at the same time. Our guiding principle is to govern pragmatically according to the will of the informed centrist. Here, we use a concept of “net centrism” which acknowledges truth along the left-right political spectrum. Legislation may contain some very far left and some very far right ideas but most will be common sense moderate ideas, which is why we refer to it as Net Centrism. Our other goal is of course to “reform the political process” so there can be more competition, which leads to innovation, which will keep us out of these constant crisis situations. Please check it out. If you want to see us pursue it, get signed up. It is free, easy, and clearly indicates you are ready to take an evolutionary step forward in out political process.
Atheists tend get crapped on by both parties. Interesting that you put them with the Democrats. Just look at the resolution reaffirming the divisive “In God We Trust” as the national motto, instead of the all-inclusive “E Pluribus Unum” originally put forth by the founders. In late 2011, the measure, “H. Con. Res. 13” passed in the House 396-9, with 2 abstentions. How in the world do results like this point to the Democrats being Atheists? The real difference between the parties in religious matters is one party wants to turn America in a “Christian” Nation, while the other wishes to maintain the diversity of Religious thought and a somewhat secular government. Neither party tends to concern themselves with Atheists (other than to occasional insult them) even though they represent 16% of the American population (a number that is increasing). Interesting how politicians will claim to represent all Americans and then start speaking about religious faith as if all Americans shared those opinions.
You probably don’t even know why you are an aethist
Good points
I was hoping for more nuance here. Your idea that women’s rights is a good idea gone berserk is belied by the fact that women are re-fighting the fight you claimed we needed to fight 40 years ago: the right to make our own decisions about contraception even. Please. You are right of moderate here. And your tone “berserk” is not moderate.
Debra: You probably meant to post this on the “Feminism” page, but I’ll respond here. I wrote that page before the recent right-wing crusade to reverse Roe v. Wade. The vendetta against contraception is just plain nutty. (It would help if the Catholic Church finally outgrew its irrational dogma on this issue.) But abortion is another matter. If some people believe that abortion is murder, of course they’re going to want to restrict abortion rights. It doesn’t mean they should be allowed to impose their beliefs on everyone else, but I think their point of view has to be treated with respect (except for the nuts who would refuse abortions in case of rape or incest). It’s not simply a matter of “get your hands off my body.” There’s another body inside. See my three-way debate on abortion for more on this. You might find more nuance there.
In general, I think the women’s movement was a good idea that was commandeered by fanatics who set its misandrist (there’s a word we don’t hear too often!) tone for decades. I really got tired of listening to all the invective about “phallocentric” institutions (like grammar? Yes, believe it or not), sexist terminology (like “HIStory”?), and the bilious rhetoric from the all-men-are-rapists school of feminism. Try being on the receiving end of all this anger for 40 years and see if it doesn’t affect your position on women’s issues.
You asked me about right and left parties…
Alexin
The only way to combat the increasing political ideological polarization is for the center (the new silent majority) to speak up. We should all unify around one set of ideas. I recently found this new site http://www.thecentristproject.org and it has a petition that all moderates and centrist should sign and we can start to make some noise.
http://www.thecentristproject.org/sign-the-centrist-petition/
I set out to find some moderates and I ended up here. I am beginning to realize that the subversion of our language began so long ago we are probably incapable of even discussing basic issues. What is racism anyway? Is negro really a “bad word?” And how about the word homosexual? Does minority mean non-white? Are American women really oppressed? Is it somehow wrong to prefer the company of others like yourself? How can we work together if we don’t speak the same language? And how can we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been? I’ve got a bad feeling about this, and I’m not sure it was wise of me to even think about this issue. Ever feel that way?
all the time.
I’m in. Where do I sign up? I agree with every post and I believe anyone watching this circus act in washington play out and the clearly partisan coverage by the media will welcome the idea. I came to the site by searching for a movement from rational informed citizens that encourage effective government actually representing the views of the middle. Less government and more rights for all people. “By the people and for the people”
Brilliant mate, Go Purples!
But in all seriousness I did quite enjoy your work (gave me a good laugh when you introduced the “Purples” idea) I do truly wish such a party could gain power, but unfortunately like Mr. Gilson said, Americas system of voting discourages new parties. Besides the ignorant voters of our country probably blindly select their candidate without even doing the research.
It’s a shame but I don’t think anyone in Washington (or anywhere) will try to change anything.
I feel we need a Workers Party. The country needs to be run by those who are doing the work and paying the taxes not by the swing votersw with their hands out. I think the Working Party demographics would be similar to the centrist group referred to. i think the workers need to take control through the vote.
I found the generalizations in this post about the two parties a bit over simplified however the notion of a true centrist party has always held a soft spot in my heart. The problem is though that congress made sure that any parties that would compete against them had to jump over some pretty severe hurdles not the least of which is to hold at least 3 percent of the national vote and win majority favor in the electoral college. But since we have a ‘winner-take-all’ system, the majority candidate in any given state gets the lions share of the electoral votes. We would have to have legislation put into effect that would even the odds and chances of a third party candidate even having a hope of getting into congress or the senate (which is why we see so many third party candidates shifting allegiances to one of the two umbrella parties.) It seems almost insurmountable to be able to get a third party candidate into an office beyond the local governments. I would love to see it happen but I have little hope of it ever happening. Good post and here’s to hoping that the American public is fed up enough with our government to start making this a reality. Maybe if we can get the majority of Americans behind it, perhaps the government will start implementing legislation that will allow for greater representation of our society as a whole.
Let’s set a platform for this party… Anyone in favor of term limits?
Term limits, for starters, including the Supreme Court. Radical campaign finance reform as well.
I don’t like term limits at all. The GOP put them in on the Presidency, because of FDR. The first person to be bitten by the ammendment was Eisenhower. I don’t know of any other profession where having experience is felt to be a disqualification! If the people don’t want to continue to have some particular incumbent in office, they can vote him out.
Correction. I know how to spell “amendment”! That was key bounce, not my inability to spell!
If the voters were informed, and if they took an active part, voting them out would work. As it is, we end up with an aristocracy.
“If the voters were informed, and if they took an active part, voting them out would work. As it is, we end up with an aristocracy.” So it’s better to have uninformed legislators and executives? I’d rather not have everyone having on-the-job training at the same time. A John McCain, with 30 years of experience in the Senate, would have made, I believe, a better President than did Barack Obama, whose sole experience was a few years in the Illinois State Senate and 2 1/2 years in the U. S. Senate.
Experience is over-rated. Doing the same thing over and over for 30 years doesn’t necessarily make you any better at it.
Yes, it is better to have uninformed legislators. Their job is not to use their own judgement. They are clearly poor at that no matter how long they’ve been ripening on the vine. Their job is to faithfully represent their constituents, plain and simple – in short, to do as they are told.
That isn’t happening now, for more reasons than one. To bring our lawmakers to heel, we must wean them from the corporate teat. We need term limits, among other things, to bring this about.
Obviously, we disagree beyond reconciliation. “Their job is not to use their own judgement”? Hardly. “Their job is to faithfully represent their constituents, plain and simple – in short, to do as they are told”? They are going to get different suggestions from different constituents. They must use judgment to reconcile those suggestions and determine what is practical. Three hundred million Americans are going to have, among them, a vast variety of incompatible ideas of the direction in which this country is to go. It is the job of our representatives to find an acceptable compromise and satisfy the greatest number of them.
Yes. Without the advanced communications technology available today, it could be argued that it was just too difficult for a representative to know what their constituents wanted. It may well have been true in the past.
Corporations use communications technology to offshore our jobs. Politicians use it to isolate themselves from their constituents. Everyone has heard of what the NSA can do with this technology. The only group that hasn’t learned how to use it yet is us. The citizens.
The last thing politicians need is for people like us to make excuses for why they must behave like petulant children at a Montessori school. The tools to control them weren’t available to us two hundred years ago, but they are now.
Term limits are more justifiable today than they have ever been.
I don’t really understand your comment that “The last thing politicians need is for people like us to make excuses for why they must behave like petulant children at a Montessori school.” So I don’t intend to argue with it. But I don’t think term limits are ever, or ever have been, justified. If I’m a citizen who is satisfied with my representative (I’m not, right now, but this is a hypothetical!) I should be able to re-elect him, rather than be forced to choose someone new. And, all other things being equal, I’d rather have an experienced representative who understands how government works than one who has never been inside a chamber and is trying to learn what the rules are.
You could make the same case for the presidency. Why not re-elect the president endlessly? Once, we did exactly that. I imagine you know the particulars, and why we don’t do that anymore. If the arguments for limiting the president’s term in office are valid, then they hold true for Congress as well. And especially the Supremes.
I’ve not heard anyone suggest repealing term limits on the presidency.
You haven’t heard any suggestions to repeal term limits on the presidency. I have, and I would go along. I suspect that Ronald Reagan would easily have gotten a third term if he could have. Ditto Dwight Eisenhower. Right now, a president in his second term is extremely weak, because he does not have any way to control his party. They know he can’t run again. Perhaps in your view this is good — in mine it is not.
Was it not Republicans who pushed through term limits on the presidency, in response to FDR’s long run?
If you read my first post, I said as much. “The GOP put them in on the Presidency, because of FDR. The first person to be bitten by the amendment was Eisenhower.”
What do you suggest for breaking the Corporate death grip on Congress, if not term limits?
I do not see “the Corporate death grip on Congress” as a problem. I think we need to break the polarization between extremes, and a better voting system might do that — proportional representation in the Congress and range/score voting or Bucklin voting for executives — but corporations are simply groups of people. A corporation simply does what its shareholders want.
Why did I know you were going to say that. You don’t think there’s anything untoward going on in Congress, you don’t think Congress has been bought and paid for by the Corporation, and you think John McCain would make a good president. I hate to tell you this Bruce, but you’re no moderate. You’re a Republican, and there hasn’t been a moderate Republican since Eisenhower. Why you come here at all is anybody’s guess.
I’m done with this site.
Assuming that “I’m done with this site” means that “Porky” won’t be reading my response, I am only putting it here so that others who read this exchange will be able to see it. This exchange shows that different people’s idea of “moderation” differs. He says, “[Y]ou’re no moderate. You’re a Republican, and there hasn’t been a moderate Republican since Eisenhower.” Well, I plead guilty to being a Republican, though I wonder how he can look favorably on Eisenhower and not on me, since I consider myself quite close to Eisenhower politically. In fact it is Eisenhower and one other, Nelson Rockefeller, who were responsible for my identifying with the Republican Party.
But I would hardly call “Porky” a moderate; his railing about corporations marks him as about as moderate as (self-declared socialist) Bernie Sanders, as far as I can see. I consider myself a moderate Republican, like Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins (to name some current and recent members of the Senate). I suspect that I am significantly to the right of the owner of this blog, but far</i to the left of the Michele Bachmann/Rick Perry/Rick Santorum sort of Republican. So what defines a "moderate"?
Let me just say that I’ve always considered myself a liberal moderate, but I primarily agree with Bruce Gilson here.
The two party government has evolved into a finger pointing blame game. It is broken. The diversity of culture in the U.S. seems to be asking for another alternative. It is very complex. Would it help to have a viable third party in the mix? It is time to send a message to our state capitals and Washington. Stop the madness. Get real. Find some common ground and start building on it. If not, then a centrist third party will have to take the reigns and make government responsible to the American people.
How about we educate ourselves as to the real positions of our candidates, review their track records, investigate what the real nature of such climes as socialism look like, and get the “liberal” media out of the primary election process so we can have a real debate on the real issues facing our once greatest nation?
Progressives tend to have the same destination in mind as the “democratic socialists” just with a slower train to get there.
Conservatives put the brakes on the libertarians, and Moderates ore all over the mat.
Sure, we need to be reasonable, however, we also need to know exactly where our officials stand before we vote them into office.
Mainly, we must not be lazy about our civil responsibilities; dig in and get the real info, and let’s all use our own brains and minds to discern for ourselves, rather than indulge the media and powers that be. If this is our republic, then damn it, let’s act like it.
Conservatism is centrism by definition. CONSERVE the CONSTITUTION!!! It is what made us greatest among the nations and caused all nations to be lifted up!!! Limited government serving a virtuous people. Conservatives are the moderates, dead set between fascists and anarchists.
Robin Hood was a revolutionary who took back from the government to provide for the impoverished people who had been oppressed by a government which overtaxed its people. We need a Robin Hood to pass legislation to reduce the overall taxes and shrink government back to its Constitutional enumerated powers.
Look up TedCruz.org for commonsense solutions to all the tough issues our nation faces.
Here’s my take on it from The Grand Old Party Abandonment Project (GOPAP):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/298572930276564/
and…
http://gopap.blogspot.com/
“But with each self-inflicted Washington crisis, notions such as an independent presidential bid, the dissolution of one or both major parties, and the rise of new political organizations seem less outrageous. The thinking goes like this: If voters today are more empowered than ever via technology (consider the disruption of retail, entertainment, and media industries), how long will they wait before blowing up the two-party system?”
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/how-crazies-are-destroying-your-party-20131031
You’re absolutely right about a new “moderate party”. One topic that the majority of voters have in common is “labor”. Breath some new life into MLK’s Poor Peoples Campaign and there you’ll have it – The Peoples Labor Party. Democrats only make a mediocre at best and do this topic little justice.
Laugh all you like, or not – because it’s the one area that the middle class and lower come to terms with – if we’re going to feed our kids and send ’em to school – we’ve got to have jobs and good ones that pay a decent wage.
Purple is actually on the blue side in the political spectrum, green would be fine, but is their not already a green party, they are very small and almost nonexistent, hmm maybe they are moderates?
Could go with yellow (third primary color).
Since Ronald Reagan gutted the Progressive Income Tax in the Eighties, the Top One Percent’s share of the US income pie has doubled from 10% to 20%, while the 2nd and 3rd Quintiles’ share (i.e., the middle class’s share) has dropped from about 40% to 30%. As I say in my eBook “I’ve Got Mine – You’re on Your Own”, the only way to even slow the decline on the American Middle Class is to increase taxes on the Rich and reduce taxes on the Middle Class; this can only be accomplished by establishing a Middle American, Moderate Party that can force the existing parties to reform the tax code.
q
The U.S. currently has many problems associated with globalization, automation,
immigration, the rise of China and demographics. But the most important problem is increasing economic inequality that is slowly destroying the American Middle Class. When Reagan gutted the Progressive Income Tax in the early 1980s the maximum income tax rate dropped from about 70% to 35%, the dividend tax from being based on ordinary income to about 15% and long term capital gains from about 35% to 20%. Money makes money, and the top one percent used their tax savings to increase their share of the income pie from 10% to 20%, all at the expense the Middle Class which has been loosing about one present of its share each year. Since the Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to mind his pattern, it will continue indefinitely. The only way to save the Middle Class is by re-instating the Progressive Income Tax. This will require the establishment of a centrist party that will coerce the established parties into re-instateing the Progressive Income Tax!
RH,
FYI, the middle class shrank under Reagan due to invigorated middle classers graduating to upper class, while lower class also shrank a bit.
If more of those suffering “inequality” would lift themselves up off the largess…
Have you ever owned a business? I have. It’s not easy to get one off the ground, especially when regulations and taxes stifle startup, let alone growth.
A progressive income tax cripples business, as does a minimum wage imposition.
Q:
What happened in the years following Reagan’s so-called “voodoo economics?”
A:
Record tax revenues from the effects of freeing up the market.
When the top 1% experience tax relief, they tend to start up companies which employ people, provide benefits and bolster economy, since they can afford to invest more monies.
Furthermore, they have the opportunity to lower prices for consumer goods and services.
Taxes ARE the BIGGEST problems;
Namely those which fund bureaucracies which the Federal government have no business instituting, of which 132 overlap in extreme waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Also, the addition of tarrifs via protectionism, transfer directly to the consumer. These are no help to our economy since we spend more to get less, and therefore have less to spend on what WE could have produced, had there been a demand.
Raymond, you will never get a job from a man without money. The less our government takes from that rich man, the more he can afford to pay you. Who has bewitched you into believing redistribution is going to help? The more the government takes, the less I’m inclined to produce…make sense?
Why should I feel entitled to something I did not earn? Tackle challenges and find your own success. We can and do succeed when we let go of a defeatist attitude and begin to be responsible for our own welfare.
Robin Hood was a revolutionary who took back from the government to provide for the impoverished people who had been oppressed by a government which overtaxed its people. We need a Robin Hood to pass legislation to reduce the overall taxes and shrink government back to its Constitutional enumerated powers.
Look up TedCruz.org for yourself and see if you can make sense of his tax plan in light of the above information.
He also has commonsense solutions to all the other tough issues.
It would be nice to have some elected officials who weren’t lawyers, insanely wealthy, or incapable of answering the exact questions they were asked.
I, along with an ever expanding number of citizens, have grown weary of the finger pointing while the country crumbles. Leadership and the highest levels is horribly absent and routinely inept at best. The perks and sweet deals have also soured citizens to the point of disconnecting with both parties in lieu of one that offers a solid middle ground stance.
If anyone currently holding office is wondering where the problem may be found, just peer into the mirror and you will find the answer. It isn’t a few, it is all of them that need to go in not more than two terms. We do not need career politicians. They need to return to the world they created and feel the sting of inept government in action all around them.
Only then will we have a remote chance of salvaging our country.
It behooves our governing officials to be lawyers, as it is a document of laws which they swear to uphold. the trouble is, not many of them even care what that document says, let alone what it means.
How about we educate ourselves as to the real positions of our candidates, review their track records, investigate what the real nature of such climes as socialism look like, and get the “liberal” media out of the primary election process so we can have a real debate on the real issues facing our once greatest nation?
Progressives tend to have the same destination in mind as the “democratic socialists” just with a slower train to get there.
Conservatives put the brakes on the libertarians, and Moderates ore all over the mat.
Sure, we need to be reasonable, however, we also need to know exactly where our officials stand before we vote them into office.
Mainly, we must not be lazy about our civil responsibilities; dig in and get the real info, and let’s all use our own brains and minds to discern for ourselves, rather than indulge the media and powers that be. If this is our republic, then damn it, let’s act like it.
Conservatism is centrism by definition. CONSERVE the CONSTITUTION!!! It is what made us greatest among the nations and caused all nations to be lifted up!!! Limited government serving a virtuous people. Conservatives are the moderates, dead set between fascists and anarchists.
Also, check out my post to raymond above…For Liberty
Sign me up. I want in.
Thanks for providing a political philosophy which provides a workable option at the voting booth – the Truth! I have bought into various political and religious philosophies, which have indulged in celebrityism to the extent they have no practical value in my everyday life. Your website spells it out succinctly and with relevance. I now have hope that there are individuals out there, who actually express true principles in their everyday lives – those pragmatists who pay their bills, cooperate with others, and have respect for others’ boundaries. Thank you!
Right wing Left wing and all others are just another part of the same shit bird!!!
It does not matter what party is elected…they all have been and will continue
to be… puppets.
Its nice to be optimistic but the truth is…it will continue to get worse.
Wow in 2016 we’ll get to pic from Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton…What has
our nation become…GOD Help Us!
How about we educate ourselves as to the real positions of our candidates, review their track records, investigate what the real nature of such climes as socialism look like, and get the “liberal” media out of the primary election process so we can have a real debate on the real issues facing our once greatest nation?
Progressives tend to have the same destination in mind as the “democratic socialists” just with a slower train to get there.
Conservatives put the brakes on the libertarians, and Moderates ore all over the mat.
Sure, we need to be reasonable, however, we also need to know exactly where our officials stand before we vote them into office.
Mainly, we must not be lazy about our civil responsibilities; dig in and get the real info, and let’s all use our own brains and minds to discern for ourselves, rather than indulge the media and powers that be. If this is our republic, then damn it, let’s act like it.
Conservatism is centrism by definition. CONSERVE the CONSTITUTION!!! It is what made us greatest among the nations and caused all nations to be lifted up!!! Limited government serving a virtuous people. Conservatives are the moderates, dead set between fascists and anarchists.
Robin Hood was a revolutionary who took back from the government to provide for the impoverished people who had been oppressed by a government which overtaxed its people. We need a Robin Hood to pass legislation to reduce the overall taxes and shrink government back to its Constitutional enumerated powers.
Look up TedCruz.org for commonsense solutions to all the tough issues our nation faces.
As George Wallace said” There isn’t a dime’s worth of distance between both parties” Both sides distort the truth and lie without shame. The mind boggles that true believers drink the kool aid. My focus is to examine the synchronicity between past events and today. For example, we are in the throes of our second perpetual war. Ike warned us against the Military Industrial Complex and we had Vietnam, 15 years and we have OEF/IEF 15 years and counting. both parties signed off. Bottom line is both parties are permanently crossed. THEY ARE ALL RICH GUYS!
How about we educate ourselves as to the real positions of our candidates, review their track records, investigate what the real nature of such climes as socialism look like, and get the “liberal” media out of the primary election process so we can have a real debate on the real issues facing our once greatest nation?
Progressives tend to have the same destination in mind as the “democratic socialists” just with a slower train to get there.
Conservatives put the brakes on the libertarians, and Moderates ore all over the mat.
Sure, we need to be reasonable, however, we also need to know exactly where our officials stand before we vote them into office.
Mainly, we must not be lazy about our civil responsibilities; dig in and get the real info, and let’s all use our own brains and minds to discern for ourselves, rather than indulge the media and powers that be. If this is our republic, then damn it, let’s act like it.
Conservatism is centrism by definition. CONSERVE the CONSTITUTION!!! It is what made us greatest among the nations and caused all nations to be lifted up!!! Limited government serving a virtuous people. Conservatives are the moderates, dead set between fascists and anarchists.
Robin Hood was a revolutionary who took back from the government to provide for the impoverished people who had been oppressed by a government which overtaxed its people. We need a Robin Hood to pass legislation to reduce the overall taxes and shrink government back to its Constitutional enumerated powers.
Look up TedCruz.org for commonsense solutions to all the tough issues our nation faces.
Loved this article! Bravo
But how do you keep people happy when being ruled by a minority?
Your article is thought provoking, and I loved it. I wish a moderate voice could be heard more often, and I wish it could have a strong foundation in the states.
The problem with multi-party systems is as follows. Currently, there has to be a majority vote to win, or at least very close to a majority. So there is always a majority party, and a minority party. If we introduce a third party, it is possible for a few more then one third of the country to win an election. One third is not a majority vote. The majority power of the country would be against the party. If a minority power is always in control, the country would be at unrest almost always. Even the extremists could ban together in social distrust and apply resistance to progress by many means.
You might say,”well the majority could still win the election and two minority parties would exist”. I move that the alternative outcome would be worse then the former. If a majority power exists in a muli-party system, then the minority parties would always be stealing votes from each other. No other party would easily take power, and we would remain with a single party system.
I see no better worlds then the current. I would love to hear opposing views.
How about we all just agree to be conservatives?
Commies and Fascists are essentially all leftist totalitarians. which is the area of the spectrum Bernie wants to lead us toward. Anarchists and libertarians represent the far right in contrast. The MIDDLE of the spectrum include such groups as progressives, moderates, and conservatives, (and formerly “liberals”, which the left has stolen from the right, as usual) . Even more important right now, how about we educate ourselves as to the real positions of our candidates, review their track records, investigate what the real nature of such climes as socialism look like, and get the “liberal” media out of the primary election process so we can have a real debate on the real issues facing our once greatest nation? Progressives tend to have the same destination in mind as the “democratic socialists” just with a slower train to get there.Conservatives put the brakes on the libertarians, and Moderates ore all over the mat. Sure, we need to be reasonable, however, we also need to know exactly where our officials stand before we vote them into office. Mainly, we must not be lazy about our civil responsibilities; dig in and get the real info, and let’s all use our own brains and minds to discern for ourselves, rather than indulge the media and powers that be. If this is our republic, then damn it, let’s act like it. Conservatism is centrism by definition. CONSERVE the CONSTITUTION!!! It is what made us greatest among the nations and caused all nations to be lifted up!!! Limited government serving a virtuous people. Conservatives are the moderates, dead set between fascists and anarchists.
The two party system has always seemed a self defeating enterprise of sorts. I agree that both parties have some validity yet they also seem to make a mockery of America and stifle any true fundamental progress for our beloved nation. While both parties offer some reasonable points neither offer what ALL Americans can be satisfied with as equal and fair representation for all. Imagine if all representatives truly represented EVERY American EVERY term instead of just one group or one idea from one side. Wouldn’t that be something?!
That’s a pretty high bar friend. You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you con’t please all of the people all of the time. This, my friend, is why we have the political process in this greatest of democratic republics.
Our answer is guys like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Ben Sass. These guys inspire the public to support and vote. That is our process. Let’s get busy in the process. If we don’t dig in, why should we get to complain when we don’t get what we want? True, the republicans have lost their way and we are disenfranchised. Find someone to get behind and DIG IN!!! go to Conservative Review and see who these guys are. I have been behind Cruz since he announced. He answers questions the same way every time, because he knows what he believes. TRUSTed…just sayin’
What the New Moderate Party really needs is a multi-billionaire to endow it with enough money to form a political organization capable of electing moderates to the House of Representatives in states that have a tradition of favoring independents The Koch brothers have pledged $900 million to help elect ultra-right candidates in 2016. Ross Perot founded the Reform Party but failed to endow it; as a consequence it never sent a single individual to Congress. Campaign professional are necessary to get candidates elected. A couple dozen organized moderates in the House would be enough to manipulate the big parties into endorsing moderate legislation. It’s not necessary to elect presidents or senators. Look a what the Tea Party has done! Does anyone know a moderate billionaire?
The historical account of party politics is not correct. If you read Madison’s commentaries on “faction,” you will see that this notion of “party,” a group of politically like-minded individuals, was firmly established at the time the Constitution was written.
The party system we have today developed from the provisions of the Constitution for creating and maintaining the national government. Those provisions expressly give to the individual states all the power to implement the electoral process, in any way they see fit. That includes voter qualification requirements, ballot qualification requirements, design of districts by incumbent legislators, polling station locations and hours, the assignment of electoral college votes, and so forth.
This cessation of power to the states was deliberate, as a balance for giving the vote to individual citizens. Under the Articles of Confederation, national legislators were elected by the state legislatures. Individual citizens voted only at the state level. Madison’s insight was that the way to get the national legislature to operate at the national level, rather than as an extension of the state governments, was to give the vote to the individual citizens. But the state legislators were not about to give up all their power.
No change in this structure is possible without amendments to the Federal Constitution, the likelihood of which approaches zero as a limit.
Structurally, a third party offers no advantage. Presuming election of some number of candidates from a third party, those legislators still have to align themselves either left or right, with Republicans and Democrats. They are then effectively operating as members of their chosen party affiliation. Thus, nominal “independents” like Bernie Sanders or Joe Lieberman are effectively Democrats, for legislative purposes. The word “independent” looks good in TV advertising, but it’s a gimmick.
I personally do not take the tag of “independent” seriously. Only small numbers of self-identified independents cross party lines in any given election. They vote Republican, or they vote Democratic. This fact alone moots the claim that the parties no longer have a clear definition for the electorate.
The solution to our electoral issues is not singular, but plural. And the solutions have nothing to do with the number of parties. We are not a Parliamentary democracy, so a legislature composed of multiple parties conveys no structural advantage.
* Non-partisan state committees for legislative districting, to end gerrymandering
* Public holidays for voting days
* Multiple voting days (e.g., in some countries the polling takes place all weekend)
* Open primaries
* Motor-voter registration
* Issue/candidate information pamphlets sent to every voter by the state, identifying every candidate and ballot issue
* Organized transportation to polling stations for those who need it
We would have a completely different national legislature and government, if the participation level was at 80% or 90%. That’s an achievable goal.
nyambol – kudos to an articulate individual! (nice hat too)
Only one issue, since we DO have parties, I’m quite opposed to open primaries; MY party should be allowed to vote for OUR nominee and let their party choose thiers. Ted Cruz has been suppressed in the open primaries by about 7% on average. Check out real solutions at TedCruz.org. He has the best plans of any candidate in decades.
The Republican and Democratic Parties fail to solve national problems when they limit themselves to using idealism-based solutions. Only by being pragmatic and moderate can we have a wide range of practical solutions to social and economic problems. Only by having the use of an expansive ‘tool kit’ can we hope to find practical solutions. By definition idealism is not practical. The limited American primary and secondary education system has taught our people to be think only in terms of ‘black’ or ‘white’ instead of the actual ‘shades of gray’ reality we exist in. The main purpose of a successful moderate party will be to reeducate Americans to think clearly about what is actually going on.
take a look at solutions at TedCruz,org
I just read this and agree with everything here. I too am tired over the political nonsense of the two parties. I’m a fiscal conservative, socially liberal voter and for the life of me, I don’t think that exists in Washington.
To hopefully help with this, I’m in the process of starting a new organization. I’m not here to sell it, but to just raise see awareness to hopefully do something truly grassroots and finally make a difference for my generation (I’m 36) and future generations to come.
Check out Americans for Moderation.
Our answer is guys like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Ben Sass. These guys inspire the public to support and vote. That is our process. Let’s get busy in the process. If we don’t dig in, why should we get to complain when we don’t get what we want? True, the republicans have lost their way and we are disenfranchised. Find someone to get behind and DIG IN!!! go to Conservative Review and see who these guys are. I have been behind Cruz since he announced. He answers questions the same way every time, because he knows what he believes. TRUSTed…just sayin’
I disagree with nyambol that a third party will no value or power. Look at the Tea Party, a collection of Libertarians, evangelists, isolationists and gun-nuts that have hijacked the Republican Party for their own purposes. Look what Ross Perot was able to do with his Progressive Party. If the US had a small moderate, pragmatic, centrist party with a simple agenda it could temporarily ally itself with one party or the other to get key pieces of legislation passed in return for helping that party with its own agenda. Perhaps as little as 30 seats in he House would work. The key would be the actual solution of problems on taxes, immigration, education, health and infrastructure in practical, non-idealistic ways. Of course we have to wait for a moderate, pragmatic-minded billionaire to come along who will organize and fund the party. This may take a long time, but the US is continuously growing more billionaires;
Our answer is guys like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Ben Sass. These guys inspire the public to support and vote. That is our process. Let’s get busy in the process. If we don’t dig in, why should we get to complain when we don’t get what we want? True, the republicans have lost their way and we are disenfranchised. Find someone to get behind and DIG IN!!! go to Conservative Review and see who these guys are. I have been behind Cruz since he announced. He answers questions the same way every time, because he knows what he believes. TRUSTed…just sayin’
Purple is fine, and a lion can be the animal.
The Republican and Democratic Parties have both grown so extreme that there is almost no overlap between them; therefore they can only compromise on issues of extreme national emergency. The Republican Party only does three things – maintain the military, cut taxes on the rich and fight big government; the Democrat Party only does three things – attempt to help the poor, improve the environment and create new regulation. Neither party attempts to help the middle class or the manufacturing workers! The median household income has been stagnant for thirty years and we’ve lost over half of our industrial jobs. I don’t see anything changing anytime soon. Why would it? Both parties are dysfunctional and don’t have the internal mechanism to change. The voters have brought this upon themselves and don’t have a proper party of change to vote for. Trump (the 21st century answer to Huey Long) might try to change things, but he’s not going to be elected, Unless some billionaire comes along and endows a true moderate party this situation will continue until something like WW2 comes along to reset world history.
Thanks for the astute analysis of our two parties; I agree with your summaries of their key concerns. Yet, as far apart as they seem on most issues, both parties have this in common: they’re dominated by moneyed interests with an eye to perpetuating the status quo. That’s why we saw a rigged primary system awarding more delegates to Hillary even in states that she lost…and it’s why we see Republicans panicking and collaborating to keep Trump from winning the nomination. Neither party truly represents the interests of average Americans, and this is why so many people assume that there’s no difference between them.
For a while, I thought a populist party might unite disaffected Americans on both the left and right (as well as the center) who demand clean government that actually represents the interests of the people… but this current campaign has alerted me to the inherent dangers of populism.
I’m coming back to my original belief that we really do need a moderate party to represent the interests of the middle class (what’s left of it) and working class — along with fair-minded policies toward the rich and poor. You’ve helped me see the need.
Pure democracy is a dangerous business, and that’s why the founding fathers, who were rather savvy fellows, created a republican (small r) system, based on democratic principles, so that the rights of the minority and the individual would be protected. For a variety of reasons, the republican charter, the Constitution, that was meant to protect us, is now under fire. Freedom of speech and religion are constantly being undermined, freedom to bear arms as well. Once we lose these freedoms, if we haven’t already, there is no peaceful way of getting them back.
If there were to be a third party that adopted as it’s purpose the need to get back to a constitutional government, I would vote third party. For the last few years, I have looked to leaders of the GOP to come up with a candidate who would stand for constitutional principles, but, alas, it has not done so. The Democrats have become an anti-constitutional party and the Republicans a party of hot air.
The middle class has suffered the brunt of this collapse because it has continued to play by rules that no longer apply to minorities or to the super rich. Sanders and Trump are poor examples of leaders, but they are excellent examples of what has happened to the two parties.
I should add that Hillary is also an example of what now passes for an “establishment” politician – a completely corrupt, felonious, ultra-rich phony, passing herself off as a woman of the people.
With all due respect, I wonder if you are really looking for a “moderate” party.
This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about, when I say the middle class has been screwed, essentially for following rules that are applied differently to them. And we wonder, “why Trump?”
“We follow the rules, and look where that’s gotten us?”
http://www.businessinsider.com/coming-middle-class-anarchy-2010-10?op=1
Something to take into account is that a Moderate Party is not always the same as a Middle Class Party. The Middle Class has been stagnant since Reagan in the 80’s cut the upper income tax limit from about 70% to about 35%, And extra money makes money. To a large extent the US economy acts like a ‘zero sum game’ and if the Top 1% gets richer the Middle Class gets poorer. Keep in mind that the rich make about half their investments abroad and won’t buy US products (e.g., cars) if they can avoid it (no prestige). To get the Middle Class going again the taxes on the rich .need to be doubled! That’s not exactly moderate! So moderate doesn’t always work!
Sometimes it takes radical means to achieve moderate ends. (You can quote me on that.) Think of the American Revolution: many if not most of the key players were men of moderate inclinations (Washington, John Adams, Franklin, maybe even Jefferson) who took radical action to create a more just, equitable society (at least by the standards of the time).
I’m a moderate by instinct — so much so that I’m increasingly angered by the outsized influence of the extremists: the PC warriors and race-baiters on the left… the plutocrats and tea partiers on the right. An angry moderate will want decisive action to combat the outrages perpetrated by both extremes. Not a bloody revolution, but a political one that shifts the power from dueling extremists to commonsense moderation. Right now there’s a hollow in the center where most Americans should be residing. I’d like to see us turn that hollow into a mountain (or at least a hill), with the extremists on the lowland fringes.
I was searching myself for this purple party you propose. As someone who has served this country for 22 years and has deep red roots, yet an agnostic, peace and truth seeker, I find myself often torn. I love this post, I think I will post something similar, what a great post, thanks for sharing.
I am a moderate independent in the tradition of Eisenhower Republicans in 1952 and 1956.
We middle class folks are always whining about our financial problems, but nobody talks about the blight of the poor rich people! They don’t have a good place to invest all the new money coming in. Some rich folks, like Bill Gates, are even giving it away. The US middle class (the main component of the consumer market) is stagnant, so there’s no reason to invest in the US economy. Growth in the World economy has slowed to a crawl and interest rates on bonds are low. The only place left is the US stock market and its already overpriced. Now Trump want’s to cut taxes big-time on the rich (including himself)! The poor rich will have even more money coming in and no place good to put it. The stock market will just turn into a bigger bubble that will finally burst.. It must be very frustrating to be rich!
We are now in the age of limousine liberals and scumbag conservatives. The former are elitist snobs who, yet support progressive causes such as LGBT rights and pro-choice rights, yet they think they are superior to everyone else, and what’s worse they send their kids to private schools, so they are not hanging around any working class folks. The latter are underclass religious fanatics, that like the former think they are superior, yet they are so obsessed with their religiosity and they want to get in people’s faces about and worst of all, have such a low IQ. I despise them both.
Moderate Party of Rhode Island here. Stop by our Facebook page and say hi. 12 years on the ballot and growing every year.
Hello, I have a deep love for this country and the people who make up this country. I have obsessed over this very issue for the last 5 years and I have many ideas on saving this great nation with its noble ideas from the dust heap of history. My ideas are far fetched and reaching but we have got to do something and something soon or we are done, resigned to be a mediocre nation whose best days are behind us. I am crazy, just an American that is sick and tired of having no voice and appalled by the realization that the cast that made this country what is was is vanishing right it front of our eyes. The middle class. Here are my ideas and for them to implemented a political 911 like event will have to occur, and Trump could be this event. 1) New Party: a new party should be formed and called the “John Doe” Party. It’s ideas should be based on the ideas and sentiment of immigrant director Frank Capra. Capra believed that the little man the working man was the backbone of this nation and that when united was unstoppable. That the greedy were destroying “the republic” and that most people were basically good and loved their fellow man. Kinda like Christians that judged their worth by their actions instead of by their church attendance. 2) Establishment of a Homeland Guard: Every man between the ages of 18 & 20 must serve in a military style entity. Women can serve but must volunteer and will not be acquired. People with illnesses and certain conditions will be exempt. In return for a 2 year stint 4 years of college or monetary compensation will be offered at the completion of your stint. The HG will only be stationed in the continental US and will perform tasks such as summer camps for the youth of the country, import inspections at all ports, food inspections, border inspections, etc…. What this would do is get people from all walks of life, rich/poor, black/white, Christian/Muslim etc… together. It would allow us to know one another and enable us to feel and understand our fellow American. It would get our youth in physical shape and teach discipline. It would also introduce a large amount of money into our economy by giving a check to millions of 18 to 20 year olds to be spent in the US. 3) Reform education: Early childhood education should start at birth and physical education should be a major part of the curriculum. At certain points in the education process tests should be given to determine the best route that a student should embark upon. The mindset of education should be not only an education but tools to make a living. Basic knowledge of personal finances needs to take the place of chemistry for the student that is not going to college. Useless information will fall to the side to make room for useful information that will be fit the student. In higher education a fast tract system should be implemented for students that want to teach. Example, a history major should not be acquired to take calculus; a basic understanding should be required but a course in a subject that is unrelated to your major is deterring good teachers from completing their education. 4) Subsidizes: We need to subsidize several things in this country. Manufacturing needs to be subsidized. If the government would give a manufacturer $5.00 per hour and the manufacturer pay a portion you would have a wealth of good paying manufacturing jobs in every state of the union. Police; the government need to subsidize every municipality who currently has a police force, a $50,000 base pay for officers. In return the officer should take a test every year, derived by the police, along with a physical. The 50k base pay would be augmented by the municipality. What this would do is guarantee qualified officers who have a desire to serve with the training to carry out their noble endeavor. Teachers; like policemen teachers should also have a base pay, subsidized by the government, of 50k per year augmented by the school district that employs them. Teachers need to paid well because their job is the most important job in the country. However, tests will be required and if you fail these tests and are judged incompetent, you will not be licensed to teach. Tests will be on the subject you teach and not include things that have nothing to do with expertise. 5) Welfare; a total overhaul should happen in the welfare system. What started out to be a noble gesture has turned into a system that sucks the ambition out of the poor and uneducated. Benefits should start when people produce proof that are working full time but making less than 30,000 per year. The government should help those who want help and not award non productive, lazy behavior. What you are doing when you just give a check is denying the “pursuit of happiness” to your citizens. It sounds hard but with subsidized manufacturing, jobs should be a available. The world is not a “rose garden” and if do not want to participate in gainful employment, you are on your own because how does the government help the one who do not want to help themselves. Rewarding laziness will end. 6) Legalization of all drugs; All drugs should legal and controlled by the government. Cities of over 100,000 will have designated areas, in impoverished parts of the city, where people can do the drug of their choice. The basic idea here is this, Americans have a strong desire for drugs and always will. What we are doing now is a failure of historic portions and a dramatic change is needed. The thought that you can govern morality is a “pipe dream” and while we are incarcerating out citizens like no other society in the history of the world, our very security is being challenged. This alone will be our downfall if we do not change our mindset. Gangs, thugs and organized criminals would die on the vine without the influx on this large amount of income coming into their coffers each year. The money that you make off of the sale of drugs goes right back into the treatment of the drug you legalized. You can tract the user and offer them help to beat the addiction that has made them a slave and squashed out any chance if them reaching their potential. The ways to pay for the enormous costs of these programs is to reduce spending on the military: I know you are scared to do that but we have to realize that the idea that we can’t be safe without large amounts of military spending is a farce. We spend 20 times more than China and do you consider China a weak nation? We can continue to have the greatest army the world has ever seen by spending money wisely instead of wastefully. This nation needs to take the mindset of the 1940’s & 1950’s and implement them today. Where is was as patriotic to pay your fair share of taxes as it was to volunteer for the army. We need to implement a new age of humility and stamp out the disease of greed and want. We must get to know and care for our neighbors and if the majority of Americans are truly Christian we must start acting Christlike. If things don’t change in the next decade we are doomed and the dream of the brightest men ever assembled will be over and tyrants and dictators win.
The problem with our party political system is that no matter how democratic and fair it claims to be, it will always try to shun and legitimize third party candidates, because if one of them made it into office, it would mean the death of the two party system. The system itself is set up so that only the two major parties can flourish within it, and the people in those two parties have a vested interest in keeping all other parties off the stage. So the only practical solution is either a multi-generational effort to restructure the political system, or a radical effort to overthrow the current political status quo to allow new parties room to breath and grow. In the end the solution is still the same, we have to kill the two party system.
I was hoping a moderate party already existed.
I’m interested in he dialog to form such an initiative.
I do believe that revising the campaign financing system (including the effects of Citizen’s United) is necessary to having an effective system.
, and must go hand-in-hand with such a new-(“purple”)-party initiative.
Moderate Party-
I believe it’s time to unify the separate moderate party groups and consolidate into a national option for our nation. I am reaching out to you, as I have with other moderate groups across the country, to inquire about your willingness to create a new political party with the national scope focused on the local and state levels of government. Since we have not yet done this, there is no roadmap for what lies ahead, but I am excited for what the future holds.
Please contact me to discuss our options.
Sincerely-
Jason C. Grant
615-364-0972
Brentwood, TN
I came to this website with hopes of researching the presence of a moderate political party. As I began reading through the comments from oldest to newest, I began to have optimism that the grassroots had begun to take hold. As I progressed and moved further closer to realtime in the comments, my enthusiasm faded. It dawned on me that another political party, regardless of it’s beliefs, will never have the same power as the GOP and Democratic parties, and here’s why. Those 2 parties have been around for a very long time. They stretch back to a time when our World (if most folks even considered the World as a whole very much) was much much simpler. It was much easier for people to agree or disagree on beliefs more holistically because the beliefs were easier to hold. Obviously through the years, and especially as we entered into the internet age, the parties have sustained purely due to the status quo and their size. Democrats don’t agree with Democrats. Moderates don’t agree with Moderates. Republicans don’t agree with Republicans. But, there is a bizarre need to “get behind” someone with the same animal pin on their campaign posters. I can’t completely explain it since I’m not one of those people, but they want or need to assign a political party to themselves, and again, there’s just too many GOPs and Democrats to conceivably make a dent with a new party within decades (We simply don’t have that time to wait). That, and I truly believe after reading all of the comments, even a moderate party can’t get enough support internally because current issues are more complex then the days of yore and for a moderate party to rocket to where it needs to to contend, there would need to be much compromise on many many issues and as a people, I don’t think we’re capable of that in the modern age. What I believe we need to do is attempt to water down the importance and power the 2 main parties have on the country. I think the way we do this is to flood the pool with independant candidates. Yes, we’ve had some over the years, but the only way existing Dem/Rep partiers will see the better option, is to give them a better option. Maybe an intelligent, but moderate celebrity or 2 who can command an audience but not be considered incompetent or a joke. Eroding the stronghold the 2 party system has won’t be easy, but creating a 3rd behemoth isn’t realistic in modern times, and honestly, it would wind up as polarizing as the major parties we have now.
Anonymous: “Flood the pool with independent candidates.”
It’s being discussed Some people are trying a variation on this theme of a way to deal with the two party mess.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fed-up-with-the-2-parties-a-group-of-centrists-rises-up-120032723.html
I think the best we can hope for is an Emanuel Macron style rising star who goes up the centre and makes alliances with the moderate/reasonable voices on the left and right like John Kasich and possibly Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Maybe he would manage to win the Democratic Nomination. What I mean is using a moderate ideology and positive populism to bring all Trump opponents together to throw him out of office in 2020.
What we see from the Dems right now indicates that the party has basically been crippled by its hostile and regressive left wing, so I feel like something radically new is needed. At least in Europe we have seen in some countries that the moderate forces have worked together across the aisle in order to keep the protest movements at bay. Hopefully the two party system isn’t too far gone to prohibit this kind of move.
If the democratic party was more moderate the democratic party would win
more presidential elections than the republican party.
I would rather be a moderate democrat than a conservative democrat
I would rather be a moderate democrat than a liberal democrat
or a progressive democrat, or a conservative democrat.
Does it cycle now?
THE RUST-BELTERS REVENGE. People that get mad at trump don’t realize he’s just the messenger. For three decades the Democrat and Republican Establishments have ignored the loss of manufacturing jobs in the Rust-Belt. Sure about half of it is due to automation, but the other half of the loss has been do to shipping jobs abroad. A few years ago Whirlpool moved their refrigerator plant (and about 3000 jobs} from my home town, Evansville, Indiana, to Mexico. That plant had been there for half a century. The party big-wigs aren’t mad at the middle class – they just don’t give a damn. Hilary Clinton would be President now if she had showed some real compassion. Trump is the Rust-Belters revenge for decades of indifference! A responsible Moderate Party could solve this problem.
Indeed. It seems like neither Republicans or Democrats are doing any good for the Rust Belt. Democrats are all praying on gentrifiers and Republicans are praying on having the working class abide to their radical agenda.
Count me in! What can I do to help get this Party off the ground!
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I wish we had a moderate party! I was talking about this today. Both parties have gone so far to the extreme. Let’s see…no I don’t want massive tax cuts on the rich, I don’t want all social programs sliced and diced like a big ham, I support equal rights to everyone…period, don’t care about religion, race, sexual orientation, period….live and let live, but I don’t believe in basically what amounts to socialism either. I feel frustrated by the deep divide and the big babies we have in Washington. I want to see a party I can support. Right now technically I am Republican but seriously considering joining independents.
Just searched to see if anyone else was thinking along these lines. it’s very clear the Republican party a being ripped apart by the base their policies have created and Democrats are pandering to their equally self-serving fringe. I figure a moderate party could potentially attract a large portion of Clinton supporters, the never Trumpers, and like-minded Independents, which could represent an overall majority. At the very least it might jolt the two major parties into some common sense.
Check the Pew Institute figures on voters currently in the middle! It is surprisingly disappointing!
It finally occurred to me that the Democratic & Republican Leaderships are just cartels – non-violent political cartels. The Mexican drug cartels are just trying to make a buck and protect their turf, and they don’t care about the Mexican People. The Dem & Rep Cartels are the same and don’t give a damn about the American People. If you accept this concept you can explain a lot. But it’s not all their fault; after all the American voters keep voting for their people. WE need to only vote for the best Independents. The few existing in Congress now are the only ones making sense of things.
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Can’t find a link for gun control, so this is the next best thing due to the divide between the parties,
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/10/fbi-stats-show-5-times-more-murders-by-knives-than-rifles-in-2018/?fbclid=IwAR39m5I_2li1oPn7UiJ6lXPwgow1bDHfoSa2FqnEE27aUVBV8UWWwkvaATY
Seems like people need to know these statistics,
1- About 8 times more murder victims by firearms than by knives in US in 2018
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
2- Main cause of deaths in the US is cancer, by far the most lethal killer. Does that mean we should ignore deaths from diabetes?
3- Mass shootings in the US as of Sept 1, 2019: 283. Mass stabbings in US: few if any.
4- A third of patients with gunshot wounds (33.0 percent) died compared with 7.7 percent of patients with stab wounds.
Jay, Everything you provided is true. Guns kill many many more people than knives. Your link and the military lik use the same numbers.
My point is the fact that rifles of all kind kill far far fewer than handguns. And using these stats, I have seen other stats that show murders of 4 or more people are caused by handguns at a higher rate than rifles.
Just like with research for medical conditions where more resources are allocated to those that cause illness, resource allocation on gun control should be allocated the same way. According to financial reporting, the National Cancer Institute spent $5.6B on cancer research in 2017. Its counterpart for diabetes, the American Diabetes Association, spent $26.6 M.
If you want to fix a problem, you address the problem. You dont use a small percentage of the problem for political expediency like politicians are today. You identify the problem, you identify the cause and then you allocate resources to eliminate that cause.
According to your stats and my stats, handguns are more dangerous than long guns. So the resources should go toward elimination of handguns.
We have had three instances of student being found with handguns on HS campuses in our town the first month of school. Thankfully, none were able to be used. But that does not get reported nationally, even though 20+ kids could get killed with these weapons. Had this been a long gun, that would get reported.
My point. Dont allocate resources based on national media reporting. Allocate based on needs and extent of problem.
Guns in the US.
It’s an unsolvable situation.
What do you think of the Bernie medical emergency?
That gonna significantly reduce his election chances?
Bernie medical issue. Depends on the actual severity of the issue. If it was really just chest pains from one blockage and no further issue, the stents should do it for now. He will be back on the stump in a week or so. If he is not out campaigning within a couple weeks, then they risk others saying he is hiding something more serious. And I will think the same as stent implants are an overnight stay or two at the most. Medicare wont pay for an inpatient stay for a stent implant if there are no complications and most insurance follows that.
But voters are blind if they dont consider all these candidates one step away from a serious medical condition because they are all over 70. That is why anyone running as the VPs are more important for reasons other than attending foreign leaders funerals.
But I also dont think it hurts Warren when primary voters have to change support from one of the long shots. She was surging ahead of Sanders and that wont change. She will have to do something way out on a limb to not be the nominee.