There's some interesting stuff over on Liberal Journal on whether it makes any sense to be a centrist in this day and age, prompted by a column from Paul Krugman. In the column, Paul takes the Sierra Club to task for endorsing a Republican. His last paragraph sums things up nicely:
The fact is that in 1994, the year when radical Republicans took control both of Congress and of their own party, things fell apart, and the center did not hold. Now we’re living in an age of one-letter politics, in which a politician’s partisan affiliation is almost always far more important than his or her personal beliefs. And those who refuse to recognize this reality end up being useful idiots for those, like President Bush, who have been consistently ruthless in their partisanship.
This is exactly correct. It doesn't matter if any individual Republican has decent environmental credentials or not. As a party, Republicans do not stand for environmentalism. Unless this changes, any vote for a Republican is a vote against environmental progress. The Sierra Club has responded to Krugman's criticism, and they argue that not everything boils down to party loyalty and they "value performance above party affiliation." In an ideal world, I think this would be the preferred way to approach things, but until both parties are as fractious as the Democrat's reputation has had them, it just doesn't make sense.
Posted by Jason at August 6, 2006 04:36 PM