Conservatively Speaking, Consider Radical Centrism

Allow me to begin this week’s column with a brief thought experiment. Picture a hollow concrete block of the kind that we’ve all seen at one time or another. The average concrete block that you can look up online can weigh 30 lbs. or more, depending upon the type and use.

Now imagine you were able to screw a small metal hook into one end and attach a rubber band of reasonable width to that hook. Try to move the block by pulling on the rubber band. Not easy, is it? You might be able to pull it a couple of inches, if that, but if you try too hard, you’ll break the rubber band. The block is that heavy.

Trust me, my purpose here is not to offer a lesson in construction. Instead, it’s to suggest something about politicians, political parties and public opinion.

The concrete block represents public opinion—massive, heavy, and usually quite hard to move. You, pulling on the rubber band, are a politician or political party that tries to get out in front of public opinion. To be sure, beyond pursuing political power by winning elections, political parties have the job of articulating various policy positions to inform and educate their actual and potential supporters. The job of political parties in a democracy, in other words, is not simply to parrot existing issues and policy positions, but to educate, inform, and thereby lead.

But to do so, the party must maintain that connection with public opinion—the concrete block—by not getting too far ahead of or behind it. If it gets too far out in front of public opinion, its connection to actual and potential supporters—the rubber band here—will snap. The same goes from the other end—if the party gets too far behind public opinion, its connection will snap as well.

Whether you support or oppose the sentiment here, the Republican ad last fall—“Kamala is for they/them — President Trump is for you.”—was tremendously effective in suggesting that, in my terms, the connection had snapped. A recent New York Times article refers to “a widening gulf between the views of the party’s liberal voters and advocacy organizations on one side, and those of the broader American electorate on the other.”

As Politico states this point, “for Democrats to regain the support of centrist voters who deliver electoral victories, they must meet Americans where they are today, not where advocates might wish them to be, or where society may be headed in the future.”

Similarly, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that “Democrats want new leaders for their party, which many feel isn't focusing enough on economic issues and is over-emphasizing issues like transgender rights and electric vehicles.” (At the same time, though, see a July 17 counterargument titled “Centrist Democrats Are the Actual Traitors to Their Party”.)

On the other side, Pew Research reports that 49% of Americans (80% of Democrats) somewhat or strongly oppose Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” while 29% (56% of Republicans) somewhat or strongly favor it (the rest not sure). According to a new CNN poll, “61% of Americans oppose this legislation.

Additionally, a new YouGov poll states that where 50% of Republicans identify as MAGA supporters, only 16% of Americans overall do so.

So, this is where the Democrats find themselves since at least the Obama administration, and the question is whether that’s where Republicans will find themselves as they go full MAGA and ignore where most people are. It’s the Democrats, though, who are currently in the credibility hole—a chasm or abyss, actually—with the public at large.

If you don’t address what people care about, they’re not going to listen to you. That doesn’t mean, of course that you’re limited solely to reinforcing what they care about, but you can’t break the connection that makes them willing to give your point of view a listen.

Don’t start where YOU are and demand that people move to your position; start where THEY are and see whether you can nudge them toward your position even if they’re not ready to move all the way to it. You can’t persuade people to consider your point of view if they’re not willing to listen to you in the first place.

Standing on your own position and demanding that others come to you is not, as the old phrase goes, the way to win friends and influence people. “Up yours” is the kindest thing they’ll say.

The thing to bear in mind, though, is this: most people, in my experience at least, are temperamentally—not ideologically—conservative. Their view is: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Formal debate is conservative in that sense: there’s a presumption in favor of the status quo, while the burden of proof is on the side advocating change. The temperamental conservative argues for keeping everything, unless someone can provide a compelling reason to change.

That’s the sense in which most people are temperamentally conservative. The radical, by contrast, argues for burning it all down, unless someone can provide a compelling reason to keep something. Whether left-wing or right-wing, and however “romantic” and exhilarating it might be, this argument, at bottom, snaps the rubber band.

Politics, we must remember, is the art of the possible; it’s at bottom a radical centrism.

Ideologues of all sorts forget that, and in the inflammatory environment of cable TV, talk radio, and the internet, we the people pay the price.

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