Kondracke: Centrists Must Organize

Mort Kondracke has a very useful column in today's Roll Call, which begins by noting that "Political moderates predominate in the U.S. electorate, but the two parties are increasingly captives of their extremes. Will the moderates ever rise up and assert themselves?"

Kondracke goes on to lament the lack of a viable moderate structure within the Republican Party which could call out the GOP's leadership from going off on wild right-wing goose chases like limiting funding for stem cell research, banning emergency contraception, pushing for the teaching of "intelligent design," and limiting the rights of homosexuals to be united through civil unions.

"There’s no question that the Democratic Party is just as much captive of the left as the GOP is of the right," Kondracke notes, correctly. "But the Democratic Party has an influential moderate wing, led by the Democratic Leadership Council, with which a number of 2008 presidential candidates are affiliated, including frontrunning Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.)."

There is no corresponding "moderate wing" for Republicans: our centrist umbrella groups like the Republican Main Street Partnership are "useful, but they are not powerful, and moderate office holders are regularly targeted for defeat by arch-conservatives from the Club for Growth, the Free Congress Foundation and the religious right." When a prominent Republican speaks out against the right wing, like former senator John Danforth did back in March, he "has no organizational backup. And, while his articles gained some momentary attention, they sparked no moderate rally."

Kondracke is right. While centrists in the blogosphere lauded Danforth's stance, none of us took to the streets to do so. "Moderates need to organize and fight - in both parties. When they don’t, they ill-serve a centrist public and miss a political opportunity," Kondracke writes. "The religious right has every right to be politically assertive. So does the secular left. What’s needed is for moderates to get militant and contest these extremes."

I could not agree more. While I would not have chosen to use the word "militant" there, I think that Kondracke is correct in his overall analysis. Centrists and moderates both in the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as those who choose to remain independent must unite, and soon, in favor of reason, common-sense solutions to problems, and government based on the will of all the people, not just those with money and organizations.

One group working hard toward that goal is the Centrist Coalition - if you aren't familiar with our efforts there, do stop by the webpage, where you can read some of our current position statements and learn how to get involved. If you know of other efforts on this front, please add them in the comments.

We've got to do it, folks - the stakes are too high for us to let the extremes continue to drag our political discourse into the abyss.