09-02-2022, 03:57 PM
(09-02-2022, 12:19 PM)David Horn Wrote:(08-31-2022, 11:12 AM)Anthony Wrote:(07-31-2022, 05:09 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Do we have much of a center-right in American politics? It seems to be vastly under-represented in American politics even if it has largely disappeared during the last forty years.
Ideally, most of the political contest in America is between the center-left and the center-right. The center-right seems to be the last people to seek to keep government activity from bloating. It is best that people exist who can say NO to excess spending instead of deciding that their pet spending is preferable to that of the other side.
Remember well: fascists are just as much for Big Government as the equivalents of social democrats. The difference is that the fascists want Big Government to serve such questionable ends as offering sweetheart deals involving public assets and enforcing the will of Big Business at its harshest. Trump, who is closer to being an overt fascist than any prior President, is as much a supporter of big spending as Obama.
It is actually the center-left that has been vastly under-represented in American politics during the last forty years: Its last remnants are Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Henry Cuellar, and Jon Bel Edwards.
If we exerecise a bit of historical benchmarking, these may be Democrats but center-left they are not. If you wish to argue for center-right, I'm with you.
That's right. What we have now is center-left versus extreme right. The center-right is barely visible now, except for a few Republicans and a couple of Democratic senators and a few Democratic representatives. Most of the right-wing now is extreme right. Most of the left is center-left. Both are over-represented. We need more of the extreme Left to have any balance.