Posted under Election 2012 & Free Trade & Immigration & Neoliberals
There has been gossip about neoliberal Thomas L. Friedman’s recent claim that a “centrist” third party is in the works. Michael Collins Piper reports:
The new party will shun both the “liberal left” and the “conservative right” and stand for “centrist, bipartisan” policies. Or, should that be tri-partisan? Friedman’s column is part of an increasingly open campaign by monopolistic media controllers to conjure up a “centrist” rebellion in America, even to the point of launching a third party to vanquish both liberal Barack Obama—presuming he is re-nominated by the Democratic Party—and a “conservative” Republican challenger. AFP warned this “centrist” movement would be a classic “controlled opposition,” dominated by the very big money forces—here and abroad —in the Rothschild banking dynasty’s sphere of influence that have controlled both major parties through their stranglehold over major media outlets shaping public opinion. Friedman’s column was titled bluntly: “Third party rising.” He wrote: “There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center.” Friedman described “two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast,” working to build third party movements that the columnist said would “challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady decline.”
It’s nearly comical that Friedman is championing a party to combat a decline that people like him helped to bring about. Regardless, if Friedman has anything to do with this party, expect it to be:
pro-immigration
pro-free trade
pro-nation building
It will be Clintonianism with a new face. How revolutionary! And don’t forget to add in anti-occidental, as Clinton was the first president openly to celebrate that the soon U.S. will no longer be a Western country in terms of demographics. Thomas Friedman is a mediocre writer and second-rate thinker at best. Upset by the failures of the Obama Regime and hoping to cash in on tea party angst, he’s now promoting a legerdemain of passing off failed ideas as something new and revolutionary. In that respect, he’s already in line behind Dick Armey and Grover Norquist.
Kirt Higdon on 05 Nov 2010 at 10:34 pm #
This absurd proposal surfaces every election cycle based on the premise that “moderates” and “centrists” have been shut out of the process when in fact they control it completely. As a non-solution to an imaginary problem, it always goes nowhere. The best any “centrist” candidate did was John Anderson in the 1980 election, who got 7% of the popular vote, failed to carry a single precinct in the entire country and was buried by the Reagan landslide. If there is a “centrist” candidate in 2012, it will be NYC’s Bloomberg in a self-financed vanity run. He might get as much as 2% of the popular vote.
James on 06 Nov 2010 at 2:06 am #
Thomas Friedman is an authoritarian technocrat. I once heard him say that he wished that, for just a day, the United States could be China so that ‘real’ things could get done in this country. That is an expression of a loathing of republicanism and the the people of this country. This idea is absurd just as Friedman is absurd. There is no recognition of the deeper current of culture and spirit in his understanding of the life of a nation. His view of politics is a specis of enlightenment rationalism that is exclusively focused on measured outcomes as if the human spirit yearned for nothing more.
Weaver on 06 Nov 2010 at 2:31 am #
Well said:
RonL on 06 Nov 2010 at 6:02 am #
Tom Friedman is a centrist? In what, the Upper West Side?
Weaver on 06 Nov 2010 at 3:39 pm #
The Oligarchs First Party.
Steve Ryker on 07 Nov 2010 at 6:26 am #
Thank you, Bede, for posting this piece about Friedman’s “ideas.” Also Thanks to all the Respondents – it gives me some hope that maybe, and sadly just “maybe,” something “can be done.”
“America” – the Land that people born before 1965, +/- 10 years or so and raised in – IS DEAD. And due to the changes deliberately brought on by Marxists, Jews and Blacks via their openly announced “social revolution,” there is no hope of ever getting Her back. She’s gone. Our only hope lies in forming a seperate country along lines similar to the “original America,” with some much-needed philosophical, “scientific” and theological improvements.
We MUST coalesce, organize, focus and materially “work,” in form (and only in form) as The Left did, in order to Found, establish and develop a New Country of, and for, those of us with similar social, cultural and political/economic beliefs.
We must coalesce (literally, “come together”) in the “Real World,” to meet and discuss these matters. Everything begins IN and with Thought; but “Thought” that is social in nature must be done IN THE REAL WORLD, SOCIALLY.
I’d like to see not only some Responses, but some positive Responses to these ideas, especially the “Real World” ones.
Weaver on 07 Nov 2010 at 6:34 am #
Rasmussen: The Rise of Sewer Money:
Sean Scallon on 10 Nov 2010 at 5:24 am #
Thomas Friedman, party of one.
Michael Collins Piper on 14 Nov 2010 at 12:02 am #
Thomas Friedman is NOT a party of one. The drum-beat for a “centrist” rebellion (so called) has been a regular feature in the last six months in The Washington Post and the New York Times and on November 14 in The Washington Post, Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell called for Obama to decline to run for reelection, part of a longstanding effort by these two self-appointed “centrists” to stir up a third party, as noted in a book on that topic by Schoen issued in 2008. People are getting so caught up in the theme that Friedman and these other types are “liberals” that they are not seeing the forest for the trees and recognizing that there is indeed a “centrist third party” drum beat in the big media in America. Oh well.
scott ehredt on 13 Mar 2011 at 3:09 pm #
Indeed there are third parties…just not ones that are on anyone’s radar yet. The National Centrist Party is testing the idea of whether or not the elctorate is willing to embrace the idea of government from the Center as well as reform of the political process. Contrary to Kirt’s comment that independents control the outcome of elections, we feel the outcome of elections are decided when closed primaries are held at a time when only 5-10% of the people vote for the candidate who eventually wins in November. If any other country chose its representation in this way, we would call them undemocratic and push for them to reform it. Sure, I admit that centrists do ultimately choose between the two candidates available in November and in that sense they do have a say…but we get much more representative government in open primary states.