The nomination of Donald Trump forces Republicans to look hard at their party, themselves—and each other. In a column for Red State, Ben Howe revealed that the zombified state of the Trump-afflicted GOP has led him into the depths of doubt, “wait…we ARE the stupid party?” To this, voices from the political middle might rise up in answer, “No, both parties are stupid.”
In his 2013 Centrist Manifesto, economist and policy scholar Charles Wheelan framed a centrist movement that would begin by electing Independents to disrupt senate majorities in state houses—so far, with just one close race lost, no dice. Around the same time, No Labels, a coalition of pols and citizens frustrated with “the attitude” of parties, was conceived by a team of consultants, and is now led by Republican Jon Huntsman, Independent Joe Lieberman, and Democrat Evan Bayh.
The centrist projects have drawn criticism from political writers right and left. Critics of these movements cast the centrist aims as impossibly idealistic, quite possibly unconstitutional, and worst of all . . . boring.
The sound and fury of 2016 quickly drowned out the few relative moderates seeking the presidency. But centrists hoping their agenda may yet find its way into the mainstream see 2016 as their time to shine. According to No Labels, it already has—in the immoderate form of Donald Trump. Back in February, No Labels co-chair, former governor of Utah and 2012 Republican candidate Jon Huntsman declared his willingness to support Donald Trump, looking forward to Trump’s “getting it done” and “wiping out the Washington establishment.”
Charles Wheelan, Manifesto author, told me that Huntsman’s pro-Trump attitude is problematic: “When you step back, Donald Trump is not the guy we need to fix our broken political system.” According to Wheelan, Republicans’ rallying around Trump highlights a fundamental problem with the parties themselves. “There’s an intellectual dishonesty that comes with having to support your team election after election,” Wheelan says. “The only way to break the current gridlock is to offer something not part of the current two-party duopoly.”
Technocratic centrist Politico founder Jim Vandehei, who has called for a centrist innovation party to harness the anger of Trump and Sanders supporters, and the organizers of No Labels cast their moderate agendas beyond Wheelan’s consistent senate-first plan. But no centrist independent has gone as far as to mount an actual third-party alternative to Trump and Clinton. And none is on the horizon.
Amid intensifying calls for a right-center or bold nonpartisan alternative to enter this presidential race, established centrists have come up empty. If the broken system is indeed ripe for a credible alternative candidate—and, centrist activists agree, a credible candidate, not just a credible idea, is required—that candidate needs to stand for causes more compelling to disaffected voters than legislative comity.
The play-nice doctrine centrists have been serving up too closely resembles more of the same, that is, the same failed bipartisanship of these Obama years. In this sense, it may not be partisan gridlock after all but the centrists’ lack of imagination and ambition that’s kept their “credible alternative” out of the mainstream.
