Is there no middle ground left anymore?

As I read things in various places – newspapers, blogs, magazine articles and elsewhere – it appears more and more like there is no middle ground left anymore on most issues. Polarization in our political system is so pervasive and so complete that every issue becomes black and white, them or us, left or right, red or blue. The other day I read something in what is supposed to be a real estate oriented blog that started out discussing the housing crisis, but which quickly devolved into accusations that everything that the Democrats in Washington are doing right now is leading the country into Socialism. In fact the discussion concluded that there can apparently only be two states for the country to be in – Capitalism or Socialism. How completely ridiculous is that?

I am old enough to recall when we had an extreme right wing in the Republican Party (Barry Goldwater comes to mind) and an extreme left wing in the Democratic Party (remember George McGovern and Hubert Humphery?) and a whole bunch of politicians somewhere in the middle who actually got things done. Those days seem long gone, as the two parties have coalesced around the two extremes. Now both parties seem to have litmus tests for party members and whoa to those who don’t toe the party line. The number of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats around these days is so small that they have been marginalized; unless, of course, the party is control wants to tout “bi-partisan” support for something.

Now we hear the screams of the right and left wing nuts on every issue. It used to be that only very weighty issues like abortion rights would bring out the protestors screaming that the other side is leading the country into hell. Now everything is a threat to our very way of life in America and it’s all the fault of the other side – the side in control at the moment. There is no ability for compromise at the national political level, because the radicals from both sides are in control of the parties and the politicians. As soon as President Obama won the election the signs of “Stop Socialism” popped up on lawns. They replaced the “Stop Fascism” signs that had been there when Bush was in office.

Perhaps it’s time for the rise of a reasonable and reasoning third party in America. Ross Perot, who had his own problems and eventually self-destructed, mounted the last valid challenge to our dysfunctional two-party system. It would likely take someone like Perot, with the personal fortune to mount a national campaign, to lead a successful effort at creating a new political middle ground. I suspect that there is a very large untapped group of very dissatisfied Americans who are tired of all of the polarization and stagnation in our current political system who would flock to this middle ground. I could be wrong, but they’d get a good long look from me.