Radical Centrism in Virginia Centroids : Below are excerpts from two lengthy articles posted on the Web. they dovetail with the previous posting. Clearly the concept, "Radical Centrism," has the potential to energize people, especially everyone turned off by partisan wrangling. In some of the 2,650 entries you can locate via a Google search for "Radical Centrist" "Mark Warner" you find repeated more-or-less "conversion" statements by a wide variety of people. The idea of RC, all of this says, has serious voter appeal. Especially when a candidate is out front about Radical Centrism and talks about it repeatedly. However, there are real problems, too. We remember the RC boom of sorts in the first term of the governator in California. Not that Schwarzenegger did anything with the phrase, he didn't that I know of, but "Radical Centrism" was a buzz word for a time in the golden state and it inspired one fairly good blog while it lasted ( 3 years or so ) and a good deal of comment in the press. Yet Schwarzenegger was anything but committed to RC and the boom eventually fizzled, especially after it became clear that Sacramento under AS would be pretty much like Sacramento under most of his predecessors. Same sort of considerations apply to Virginia. But there is a HUGE difference. Warner made Radical Centrism not only incidental to his politics, but the guiding motif in his worldview. True enough, as a Democrat ( sort of a Blue Dog ), he is now tied to the fortunes of the BHO administration, but the point not to forget is that here is a state where the concept has received MAJOR publicity over an extended period of time. Even if Warner turns out to be a dud -but he may eventually be regarded as a success-- the concept is now "out there" and could well influence all kinds of people to pick up on it, and run with the ball for themselves. That is, you can almost say "so what if Warner was Virginia's first evangelist of RC ?" the fact is that the idea has objective merit and others who now know about it are free to make it their own. What they may do with it, anyone's guess. I'd say that RC is not going away as far as Virginia is concerned and necessarily will take on a life of its own. So far I have not found any connections to folks in the commonwealth who may have RC interest. But it would seem that we have an opportunity if we can find such connections. One thing we still need but don't have yet, is a "sexy" way to promote the idea of RC. "Why does it matter ? " we can answer with little or no difficulty, but we don't know how to reply to " where is the excitement ?" How do we make the concept viscerally appealing to others ? When we come up with a good answer to that one we ought to be able to go places. Billy =================================================== Virginia Business.com January 31, 2010 I think that Virginia really has had the best of both worlds here in the last couple of years. You have a very respected, moderate Republican who has really thought through issues on his own and has the ear of people in both parties when he makes a decision on an important issue. …And we’ve had a new Democrat [Sen. Jim Webb] who also carried a lot of good will into Washington with him because he helped to change the control of the Senate with his election. And to have two senators who got along well and could work from two different parties on issues was wonderful for Virginia. We do lose something by having two Democrats. On the other hand, that’s kind of softened by a couple of things. Number one: Democrats control the White House and Congress right now. It won’t be a huge problem right away. And we have a centrist Democrat in Mark Warner, who has promised to come into Washington and be a “radical centrist,” a term that he uses all of the time. --------------------------------------------------------------- from The Trinity Tripod _Zach Sonenshine_ (http://media.www.trinitytripod.com/user/index.cfm?event=displayAuthorProfile&authorid=2792919) Issue date: 9/15/09
Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) often sardonically refers to himself as a radical centrist. While he is not the first to employ this term, Warner is certainly one of few to stand by moderation and pragmatism over idealism and its close cousin, partisanship. He has staked out the ground that matters most: the middle. Brewing for the past year, marked initially by the economic collapse, began a series of events and circumstances that cultivated a unique breeding ground for partisanship in a time that calls for bipartisanship, pragmatism and compromise. The President understands the role of compromise too, and notwithstanding his Republican critics, who would paint Obama as a leftist. The President may become the executive of the Radical Center.
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