Another Bi-Partisan Think Tank
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Good Decisions
Hello progress!
Four former majority leaders who used to battle on the Senate floor plan to launch next week a “Bipartisan Policy Center� to encourage Republicans and Democrats to work together on national security, energy and agriculture issues. With funding from philanthropic organizations, former Democratic leaders Daschle and Mitchell, and Republicans Dole and Baker, aim to develop what a spokesman calls the “best ideas from the left and right� and then build “political momentum.�
Political momentum for what I wonder? A third party? Probably not, but are they talking about trying to maintain a good balance in the Congress? That would be welcome, since we’ve seen what long-term, lopsided majorities do to party politics.
Now, obviously isn’t the first bipartisan think tank. The Partnership for A Secure America sprouted up in 2005. After a quick search on Google I haven’t found any other national ones, but there’s no doubt that more exist…maybe.
Still, chalk another one up for the centrist movement. The middle is gaining traction.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Good Decisions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Gee. Only one existing bi-partisan think tank is listed by Google. There may be more out there.
What good are bi-partisan think tanks that nobody has ever heard of? I agree the middle ground is where this country needs to be. However, when the media covers only either conservative (mostly) or liberal ones, us middle grounders get left out in the cols. this is only one of the costs of living in a polarized society.
I wish these four the best, but our past & current record concerning think tanks is already working against them.
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I agree there needs to be more bi-partisan discussion especially now. But not a middle-of-the-road thinking. Certain issues that are pressing must be decided. For example we need to decide whether the occupation of Iraq is a good thing. I personally question it, not only because of the expense, but also we do not at this point we do not have international support and we don’t have to sustain Bush’s misguided approach. Democrats believe McCain will be worse, I don’t think so, McCain will be smarter about these issues, but also supports a long term occupation without a good international dialogue without adequately considering the Iraqi citizens. We do not need to be the police the world. Unfortunately Hillary and Obama need to work on some of their assumptions of the situation. They I believe would be better at international diologue but need to understand we ARE NOW IN this unfortunate situation because of Bush’s misguided naive belief that disorganized and even clumsy military action will solve the problems. We no longer need to crash toward dysfunctional conservative ideals of War. And we also need to address the war - and we can not just leave either. We need to really ask the population of Iraq what they want. How can we help? As much as I didn’t want to admit it intervention of some kind was important - but I seriously question long term occupation. If we can help the Iraqi people then yes let’s stay if we can’t then we need to leave.