A moderate’s lament

When it comes to politics, I consider myself a raging moderate — which makes me politically homeless. I vote a split ticket as a matter of principle and change my party registration periodically to whichever party has the most interesting primary. I used to be a Clinton Democrat, but the Democratic party has purged its moderates (and Bill Clinton is looking a little like Banquo’s ghost). The Republican tribe has no one along the lines of Eisenhower, Ford or even Reagan.

I generally support the liberal goal of providing a social safety net but am dismayed at the Obama administration’s wildfire government growth, anti-business agenda and unsustainable spending and debt.  The Republicans have financial logic on their side at the moment but some of their proposals are equally extreme.

The ideal solution is somewhere in the middle, in the American tradition, but that’s unlikely today. The Democrats are dominated by organized labor, the environmental lobby and the trial lawyers. The Tea Party movement adds some much-needed vitality but has stampeded the Republicans into extreme positions, and the social conservatives are back. The result is that elected officials now compromise at their peril. It is telling that both President Obama and Congressional Republicans were willing to shut down the government over a trivial amount of funding for Planned Parenthood.

I attribute some of this hyper-partisanship to years of legislative district gerrymandering. In most states legislators can draw the boundaries to create “safe” districts for incumbents, which allows elected representatives to choose their constituents instead of the other way around. A significant number of state legislators (including mine) and some congressmen are routinely reelected without opposition. So legislators have less incentive to be responsive to their constituents and are more loyal to their parties and campaign contributors.

Another factor is that primary elections are open only to registered Democrats or Republicans and tend to be dominated by each party’s extreme wing.  The result is that moderate candidates are eliminated in the primaries, and voters in the general election are presented with a Hobson’s choice between an extreme liberal and an extreme conservative (who then masquerade as moderates just long enough to attract independent voters).  A few states have open primaries but there is no support for expanding this system.

Divided government is an advantage when the parties controlling each branch of government are willing to compromise, as we saw in the Clinton-Gingrich years. Congressional deadlock can block harmful legislation, but presidents have unprecedented power to bypass Congress through recess appointments, executive orders and unaccountable regulatory agencies such as the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

One hopeful sign is a new “No Labels” movement that calls on both parties to get together on national priorities, but so far this is not gaining traction. Perhaps the only course open to moderates is to rotate the extremists in and out of office quickly before they can do lasting damage.