Third Party & Independents: Archives

I am utterly speachless. With those positions you can hardly be called a moderate IMHO. Especially on a core issue like Gun Control. The issue to conservatives is a right to bear arms to ensure the security of a free state….not to go hunting.
Please do not get into it with me on that issue though because I wan’t to keep the discussion in the context you placed it in and not a debate about specific issues. Just what do the other Republicans think?

Also, it is strange to me that so many Democrats are also “third party” people….isn’t that just wrong? How can you call yourself a moderate and be a third party editor and then go over to the Democrat Blog and post Democratic issues.
Strange…it doesn’t seem to me that Republicans do this.

1.) You didn’t read closely Pete, I said that I was a moderat in the sense that I’m in the middle (or as Bennett says, a centrist). I agree with Democrats on some issues and Republicans on others.

2.) I post to both the Democratic blog and the Third Party blog because in the beginning I told Cam that I had views that were both in line with Democrats and in line with no one (ie. Independent/Third Party).

I’m not here to debate gun control. I agree with you that the GOP have the stance that you stated and I pointed out that my stance on gun control was in line with Democrats, in fact I’d say it’s even more left than them.

Socially speaking I’m fairly in line with Democrats, while fiscally I’m somewhat in line with the GOP, which, in my opinion, makes me a moderate (as in between the two extremes).

I hope that clears up any confusion.

—Joe

I like to call myself a moderate because, for some reason, retaining constitutional values does not seem to be a core value of either major party. in short, we are getting f**ked from both ends of the political spectrum and it makes sense to be in the middle because:

a) I can’t feed off the welfare system when Democrats are in power
b) I’m not rich enough to feed off the supply-side economics when Republicans are in power
c) I can point out Bush’s mistakes in Iraq and with tax cuts, and in the next breath discuss the oddity of Wesley Clark’s role in Waco and ponder why his own men called him a “perfumed prince”.

Generally…

Those who call themselves moderates — aren’t. They’re just looking to pass off their particular positions as mainstream under the pretense of being moderate.

Just an observation.

Boy that hit the nail on the head Chris.

joestump you are definetely not a moderate IMHO. You might think you are. But your not.

Religion
It is more than just the 10 commandments at an Alambama Courthouse, it is the banning of a nondenominational prayer before a Friday night highschool football game in rural America.

Religion is a fundamental freedom of which our country was founded upon. And liberals dont like that idea.

Gun Control
Lets just give up the 2nd amemdment. Who goes hunting anymore anyway … Right? Come on.
Yeah, that is a centrist’s belief, ;)

Truly amazing.

He never claimed to be a centrist. His point is that on some issues he’s on the left and on some he’s on the right. In our two-party system, he fits in neither party, so he finds himself in the only other bucket available - other.

I believe at the top of the post it says…
“Why I call myself a moderate”

come on people, if you are a liberal why can you not admit it. It is so passive-aggresive to try to pass yourself off as a moderate when you are not one. It is intellectually dishonest…unless, of course, you don’t realize it. That is what is happening here, I think.

I would say my stances on welfare, the military and abortion are moderate. My stance on welfare is pretty right in face. What I forgot to mention was my stance on affirmative action: it’s reverse racism and fool of holes. I’d say that’s a rather right wing statement as well. If you add up all of the rights with all of the lefts you end up right around the middle.

Maybe it’s an argument of semantics. The adjective “moderate” applies to both Democrats *AND* Republicans. A moderate Democrat might be one who opposes abortion, while a moderate Republican may be for abortion.

Should I just give up and say I’m a “middleist”?

—Joe

Joe, when I hear the term moderate bandied about, I think about the traditional left-right spectrum and the majority of a person’s beliefs falling near the middle as if it were a Gaussian distribution (bell curve). To me the positions that you have taken above are more of a barbell distribution. Is a moderate someone who says that we should tax the rich at 100% above a certain income yet everyone should be allowed bazookas and assault rifles? The positions balance out, but the person holding the positions can hardly be called moderate in any sense of the word.

I think you’re more D than you think. I think your *misperceptions* of the Democratic party’s position on the following issues are very interesting, and they are probably the reason why people who should really vote Democrat often get tricked into voting Republican.

> Abortion (R) - While I’m very much in the
> middle on this issue, I put myself in the
> Republican corner because I don’t like the
> Democrat’s view on abortion in that it should
> be a free-for-all and then, on top of it, the
> tax payer foots the bill.

Dude, the Republican party is almost without exception against anyone ever having an abortion, even if raped, even with a day-after pill. It’s locked into the GOP platform. You have picked the wrong team on that criteria alone.

Also, in your abortions-only-for-some-people universe, how would you honestly be able determine who was a “slut” and who was raped and who simply had a condom accident? If you think an abortion is something that anyone *wants* to go through, then you’re wrong. I think the procedure itself is enough of a deterrent that we don’t need intrusive laws here.

> Welfare (R) - Get a job. If you can’t get a
> job then we’ll float you, but only for so
> long. Maybe you got hurt on the job or go
> laid off. If you got hurt or laid off this
> means you once had a job, which means you
> should be able to find another.

Okay, but what about when, after all that, you *still* don’t find a job (whether because you’re crazy or lazy or unlucky, it doesn’t affect my question)? Do you think that those people should just be left out to die on the streets? Or that they should resort to crime? Both of those options are more expensive to society than welfare. I thought you were a ROI practicalist.

> Military (R) - Again, I’m more in the
> middle on this one, but put myself as a
> Republican because I think we should have
> a huge military. This is probably because
> I’m a huge Discover/History channel buff
> and a small wussy military would leave me
> with nothing to watch (you think the Swiss
> have the Discover Wings channel?). Where I
> veer left on this issue is that I don’t
> think we should use it, except for extreme
> cases, and I don’t think we should use it
> with UN approval/backing.

Your party distinctions are simplistic stereotypes with little basis in reality. There are almost NO mainstream Democrats who advocate that we shouldn’t have a huge military or that we shouldn’t be perceived as the world’s strongest military power, yet there are plenty of mainstream Republicans who advocate unilateral military aggression that is deployed frequently enough to keep the world afraid of America. I think the only real party difference is precisely what you say you like about Democrats: Republicans want to have a huge army to put to use in the name of American economic interests and domestic political gamesmanship, while Democrats want it for defensive purposes and for helping the world take care of international crises.

A perpetual problem with Democrats, and one that is pervasive in your three statements above, is that they are WEAK. That they are unwilling to stand up for what’s right and to clamp down on what is wrong. Methinks also that you might put an (R) next to your position on crime, thinking that Democrats are soft on crime.

The Democratic party is very inclusive. It includes people who represent extreme left wing positions. similarly, the Republican party includes people with extreme right wing positions.

The symmetry ends when you realize that the extreme right wing of the Republican party actually RUNS the party, and the moderates in the party only help gravitate them back towards the middle and away from the edge of armageddon (without Colin Powell, Dick Lugar, John McCain etc, where would we be???). Their platform is farther to the right than many of their party beleives it to be.

The Democrats, on the other hand, lie closer to the middle of the political spectrum, and their party platform and party leadership is pretty middle of the road… and yet the far left wing voices in the party seem to define the public perception of the party overall. And honestly I can’t think of a far left voice analogous to the far right voices of almost every member of the Bush administration and all of the Republican congressional leadership.

So, in closing, get over the stereotypes and read the platforms. You’ll be shocked at how reactionary the GOP is and how moderate the Dems are.

http://www.gop.org/gopinfo/platform
http://www.democrats.org/about/2000platform.html

-Cf

The Democrats, on the other hand, lie closer to the middle of the political spectrum, and their party platform and party leadership is pretty middle of the road…

I would disagree with you on that. If we are going to talk about “middle of the road” then we must also take into account the recent congressional elections and the fact that the Republican party now controls all three branches of government.
Where I have a problem with the Dems is this…
They are just too angry to get anything done and lately rely on invective and rhetoric to get there points across. They accuse while being guilty. They say that Republicans are evil while they criticize Ann Coulter for saying that Democrats are treasonous. They call the President a miserable failure publicly in a time of war.
This language lies, not in the main-stream, but, rather in the EX-tream.
If the Democrats want to pursue a healthy platform for America they should shift….in a real way, towards the real middle of the country. Clinton was successful at this after Dick Morris (R) told him how to do it. It worked, and there were four more years of Clinton. He softened his stances on nearly all fronts and became a two-termer.

Hey Chris…Your company has done some really beautiful work. My hat is off to you.
Keep creating jobs!

Pete, are you saying that calling the President a failure in a time of war is by definition a bad thing to do, even if we beleive that the war was a big mistake (or even a big fraud) and that the nation’s policy desperately needs to be drastically changed?

Are you implying that *any* time the nation is at war it is treasonous for anyone to express opposition to the president, or to the war? For example, if a President Gore were to have invaded Iraq but in the process managed to shatter most of our key alliances in the war on terrorism and managed also to plunge our country into economic freefall, with no end to either the economic or foreign policy problems anywhere in sight… would you keep your mouth shut?

It is stunningly mean-spirited of you to assume that people who oppose the president are “treasonous” (as if we are secretly working for North Korea or Al Quaeda!!) rather than giving us the benefit of the doubt and imagining that we beleive that we can make the country a better place for everybody if we can change the way the government is run or even by changing the people in the government. Thankfully, because this is America, we can do both freely.

—

Thanks for the kind words about my company. As a small businessperson my politics towards business in general has changed over the past few years. For example I am more sympathetic than I once was towards the idea of govermental tax breaks to help businesses in certain areas of the economy. I am terribly frustrated by the complexity of tax and other business regulations. I appreciate the importance of business as the key part of the economy in a way that I never have before.

But on the other hand, as an employer committed to doing the “right thing” for myself and my employees, I actually now have way more sympathy than ever for movements to raise minimum wages, to cap corporate salaries, to put an end to offshore tax shelters. I am more sympathetic now to the welfare and potential of the small businessperson and less sympathetic to national megabusinesses from WalMart to Accenture, if only because I am aware of how the socioeconomic system increasingly stacks the deck in favor of the big guys. I better understand the many specific ways in which companies and executives can actually cheat the system. I also appreciate the importance of having a low-risk, well-planned budget and of avoiding deficit spending.

They say a Republican is a Democrat who either got mugged or got rich. I am not rich, but I am a businessperson now, so according to the stereotypes I should skew Republican. My growth as a small businessperson has leaned me far away from some of the far-left positions of my youth, but it has also allowed me to realize more and more that my far-left ideas about business never represented what the Democrats stood for anyway. Maybe its a coincidence, but simultaneously with my personal transition from employee to employer came a tectonic political change where the mantle of “fiscal responsibility” or even “fiscal conservative” was willingly discarded by the GOP and picked up by eager centrist Democrats like Clinton (to the dismay of many other Dems, of course).

Sigh.

Stop by a visit our new third party site. Moderate Party

I tried to access your new third party site. Received “Internal Error”. Please check. I’m curious to see this site.

Plus, I may want to add to this post. Very interesting opinions…of which, some I agree with and some I don’t.

If I may suggest the following: I think we need to be careful “labelling” others too much…ex. sluts, unpatriotic, etc.

I’ll be back…trying to formalize my thoughts.

Thanks,

Michelle