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Even Congress sick of Congress; moderates leaving

WASHINGTON (AP) — The moderate middle is disappearing from Congress.

Evan Bayh is just the latest senator to forgo a re-election bid, joining a growing line of pragmatic, find-a-way politicians who are abandoning Washington. Still here: ever-more-polarized colleagues locked in gridlock — exactly what voters say they don't like about politics in the nation's capital.

Politics runs in cycles, and the Senate has seen flights of self-styled centrists before. In 1996, for example, 10 senators who could boast strong bipartisan credentials chose to retire rather than re-up. Many of them complained how lonely a place the middle ground of American politics had become. But to some, the center has become even lonelier.

More than their feelings are at stake. The moderates in the middle are the ones who tend to make deals and sometimes resolve standoffs blocking decisions that affect programs — not to mention taxes — that touch virtually every American. (Emphasis added)

Former Sen. William Cohen says what's happening now is a continuation of the “hollowing out of the middle.” An article he wrote when he left his Senate seat in 1996, lamenting partisan gridlock, could just as easily be reprinted now, subbing his name for that of Bayh, the Indiana Democrat who announced on Monday he won't run again.

“There is this sort of purging in both parties,” Cohen said in an interview. “They insist on moving to the left or moving to the right, and I think you're seeing over the years the moderates have disappeared and continue to disappear.”

The few left in the middle can gain outsized power to decide the fate of closely fought issues. But that comes at a price more and more of them say is too high: crushing pressure to conform, shrill media barbs and the increased fight for cash to shape one's own campaign narrative. (Emphasis added)

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What has happened is the President has put too much pressure on the moderates to bend to an extreme left bill and the far right has introduced far right elements into the bill. That does not make it a happy situation for the moderates. 

A hodgepodge of extremes, a moderate NOT make.  They do not want to have their name on the bill that will, for example, literally economically negate the choice available on Roe v. Wade (Senate version) or make it impossible (House version). A compromise on that? Hell, no! I can see why moderates do not want any part of it.


I believe this is not good for the country.  We need MORE moderates, not less.  Further, we need MODERATE bills, not a hodgepodge of extremes.

-- Edited by Sanders on Wednesday 17th of February 2010 06:18:45 PM