Third Party Madness

The romance of the "3rd party of the center" is precisely that: a fiction. Churchill tried it in Britain and it didn't work there either. I am no fan of 3rd parties - I have said all I have to say about what a mistake importing multiparty democracy in the the U.S. would be (here). It won't happen, and it shouldn't happen, and it's completely unnecessary.

There are those who can't seem to grasp reality, however. Ron Brownstein has revived the idea that a third party of centrists could appear to challenge both major parties. He suggests that with the Democrats and Republicans so polarized, and with the organizing potential of the internet, a viable 3rd party race could be possible in 2008:

Yet if the two parties continue on their current trajectories, the backdrop
for the 2008 election could be massive federal budget deficits, gridlock on
problems like controlling healthcare costs, furious fights over ethics and
poisonous clashes over social issues and Supreme Court appointments. A
lackluster economy that's squeezing the middle-class seems a reasonable
possibility too.

In such an environment, imagine the options available to Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) if he doesn't win the 2008 Republican nomination, and
former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, now that he's dropped his
flirtation with running for mayor of New York. If the two Vietnam veterans
joined for an all-maverick independent ticket, they might inspire a gold rush of
online support — and make the two national parties the latest example of the
Internet's ability to threaten seemingly impregnable institutions.

Bull Moose is absolutely orgasmic at the prospect.

Now there is indeed a revolt of the center from the Republicans, with no real shift towards the Democrats, as Dionne as noted (although check out Abramowitz for more encouraging news.)

There are a lot of problems with the Brownstein scenario. As Chis Bowers has pointed out, the support for a hypothetical third party is actually less than it once was, and there are major structural obstacles to any competitive third-party run. But the more important argument I think it that of the Decembrist, who reminds us that there is no party polarization, as such. The Democrats are no more liberal, and in fact are much more moderate, than they were a generation ago. There is only one political party which is ideologically extreme, and that is the Republicans. Fighting extremists does not make you an extremist too. And perhaps one of the reasons that Democrats are so much more unified than in the past is that their differences have been buried in the face of such a threat to American democracy as presented by DeLay & Co.

The centrist strategy and the liberal strategy for opposing Republicans are essentially the same: to recapture middle and working class white voters by emphasizing clean government, responsibility, and economics; to fight the war on terror in a more sober and realistic way; and to carve a middle path between cultural license and cultural oppression. Democrats and "centrists" really disagree on NONE of these issues.

So there is no need for a centrist third party, because we already have a centrist party in America: the Democrats.