Is the Forward Party the Real Deal?
"Chess board" by Eugen Anghel is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
At a perilous time for American democracy, can the Forward Party rise to the challenge?
I want to believe in the Forward Party.
Like a lot of Americans, I would like to see more political parties. Like many Republicans, I’ve grown frustrated and frankly, afraid of the growing illiberalism in the GOP. Like many so-called “centrists” I’d like to see a party that isn’t so beholden to strict ideology.
Led by former Presidential candidate Andrew Yang and a host of former Democrats and Republicans, the party wants to be the answer to a political culture dominated by the extremes in both parties. On that, I and many other Americans would agree. A large segment of Americans want to believe in non-political, non-ideological politics. We want to believe that political parties and governments can operate without the need for ideology. We want to believe experts would craft wise policies that everyone would find acceptable. We want to believe in leaders who simply follow what works instead of clinging to old ideologies that no longer work.
But what we want to believe is far different from what actually is. At this moment in time, we have to focus on what is in front of us and not what would be nice.
Now polls consistently say there is a need for a third (or fourth party) and as former Republican and current Forward Party big whig David Jolly notes there is a wide swath of people that don’t feel at home in either major party. Put those two things together and you get an effort like the Forward Party which seems to be the answer people are wanting.
But here’s the problem: this is not the first time someone has proposed a centrist party. In the last 15 years, there have been a number of attempts to create some kind of bipartisan vehicle that would transcend left and right that went nowhere. Unity 08. Americans Elect. They came and went.
The reason is that these efforts, like the Forward Party, provide a wish. What Americans want is a choice and to have a choice you need a guiding ideology. You need to have an idea of how best to run government and run not just efficiently but in a certain direction.
“New parties ride issues to power,” says conservative writer Jonah Goldberg, adding that it was issues like slavery that brought third parties like the Republicans to power.
Liberal columnist Jamelle Bouie, writes that successful third parties are the flies in the ointment of the existing system. He cites the example of the Free Soil Party which disrupted a political system designed to sidestep the issue of slavery:
During the presidential election of 1848, after the annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a coalition of antislavery politicians from the Democratic, Liberty and Whig Parties formed the Free Soil Party to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. At their national convention in Buffalo, the Free Soilers summed up their platform with the slogan “Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men!”
It succeeded. In many respects, the emergence of the Free Soil Party marks the beginning of mass antislavery politics in the United States. It elected several members to Congress, helped fracture the Whig Party along sectional lines and pushed antislavery “Free” Democrats to abandon their party. The Free Soilers never elected a president, but in just a few short years they transformed American party politics. And when the Whig Party finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, after General Winfield Scott’s defeat in the 1852 presidential election, the Free Soil Party would become, in 1854, the nucleus of the new Republican Party, which brought an even larger coalition of former Whigs and ex-Democrats together with Free Soil radicals under the umbrella of a sectional, antislavery party.
Bouie argues the Forward Party doesn’t have animating issue that could force one or more of the parties to change. It offers a sense of niceness and civility, which isn’t bad, but that isn’t what’s needed right now. It’s certainly isn’t an issue people are just dying to get behind.
The Forward Party seems to be an answer to a question no one is asking. That’s a shame because America needs a political party that can face the questions and challenges of the moment. One of our major parties is so enmeshed in the horserace of politics that it can’t see clearly that the other political party is slowly but surely leaving liberal democracy behind. The loss of Republicans like Peter Meijer and Jamie Herrera-Butler as well as the impending loss of Lynne Cheney means there are fewer Republicans willing to stand up to the party’s titular head, Donald Trump, who day by day reveals his wish to be an American caudillo like Juan Peron or Augusto Pinochet. In light of the recent raid on his Mar-a-Lago property by the FBI, Trump is fashioning himself as above the law. Republican politicians have rallied to his cause with a number saying that this will propel Trump to run again in 2024. Jonah Goldberg reminds us what this potential caudillo is capable of:
Let’s return — just one more time — to that thought experiment. What I left out is that the ousted ruler seeking to return to power whose home was searched had tried to steal the last election by spreading lies about its legitimacy and treating the Constitution like a dead letter. He declared victory despite being assured he lost by his own attorney general and campaign manager. He wanted the DOJ to simply declare the election corrupt so he could do the rest. He toyed with the idea of using the military to seize voting machines as some sort of pretextual theater. He railed at his Supreme Court appointees for their lack of personal loyalty when they failed to go along with his scheme. He wanted to appoint a deluded and pliable flunky as the head of the DOJ because he was willing to run wild with propaganda about the election being stolen. He invited a mob to the capitol to scare Congress into helping him steal the election and did nothing for hours when the rabble turned violent and even erected a gallows to hang his own vice president. He and his junta now talk about these criminals as if they are political prisoners unjustly persecuted by a corrupt regime.
If you’re worried about America looking like a banana republic, please don’t tell me that the first president in American history to defecate on the peaceful transfer of power is the antidote to the rot of Third World corruption of our regime. He is the rot.
We now have a party, a party that used to be my home, that has people willing to do whatever is needed to put a strongman in power that will crush their enemies. There are already plans afoot that if Trump is elected again in 2025, he will implement a plan that would radically change the government to ensure that it will be loyal to him.
Donald Trump is a cancer on the American republic. If he is not stopped, he will damage our society in ways we can’t yet imagine. He and his ilk must be challenged and we must cut out the cancerous cells threatening the body politic. It feels right now that we need a movement that can craft a vision of hope for the American people. I don’t know right now how we fight the threat of Trump, but I think it means providing an answer that challenges Trump. I think it means talking about the renewal of American democracy. We need people who know the stakes are high. The Forward Party doesn’t get this.
A centrist party isn’t a bad thing, but in this time when it seems like American democracy hangs in the balance, it needs to provide a real choice and not simply a nice wish.
Dennis Sanders is a pastor in Minneapolis, MN where he lives with his husband and their two cats.
___________________________________________________________
The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.
Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or its members.
[This article originally appeared on Medium.]
