Some people are way too reasonable

There are people lurking around the fringes of American politics who are determined to spoil the fun. One of them is a man named Charles Wheelan, who’s written a book called the “Centrist Manifesto.”

I caught him on CSPAN saying nice things about Democrats:

“We’ve got to think about giving everybody in the country an economic opportunity and the Democrats have kind of led on that, even if they’ve been tepid in some respects.”

And then saying nice things about Republicans:

“Their respect for wealth creation is really important. We cannot simply redistribute our way out of our problems.”

He then pointed out that both parties have blind spots. For example, he admires the Republicans dedication to small government.

“But I’m not going to concede that trying to pass a constitutional amendment to ban consenting adults from getting married is small government, it’s not,” he says.

And he admires the Democrats determination to protect entitlements – but:

“If you care about those programs, social security and medicare, then you have to fix them.”

And so he plans to recruit genuine problem-solvers to run – not for president – but for open Senate seats, where they would actually have a chance of winning:

“There are no runoffs in Senate races, all you need is 34 percent of the vote in a three-way race.”

And if just four of these centrists get to the Senate, you’d have 48 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and the 4 centrists who would have the power to decide every vote.

Yes the debates would be a lot duller, but – let me put it this way – ridding Congress of its flaws might spoil its pizazz, but at least they might be passing laws instead of passing…gas.