Third Party Look: Modern Whigs

[AltWorlder]

These guys.

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They seem to be really pragmatic centrists to me, unlike Ross Perot/Schwarzenegger-type centrists who are basically small government fiscal conservatives that are sane enough to not be libertarians.  What do you think of their ideas?

[AltWorlder]

Well, the thing about Libertarians, even Ron Paul 'libertarians', is that they favor policies that require radical restructuring of American government as we know it.  On the other hand, there are economic conservative/social liberals such as Schwarzenegger out there, or perhaps Giuliani (other than every national security) who kind of fit the libertarian configuration without having necessarily the wacky ideology or policies of actual libertarians.  (I am guessing that's what Ross Perot's Reform Party was all about, though even today I don't understand if his ideology was leftist or rightist.)  All of this is rather "centrist", but I'd argue that it's still heading towards the libertarian config.

This Modern Whig Party, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have the same fetish for small government that Libertarians, libertarians, and people in the libertarianish configuration have.  They seem to stand for moderate, prudent, pragmatic actions, and I like that.  While I believe that big government can certainly be a bad thing, if adequate controls are put in place it needn't necessarily be.

[AltWorlder]

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I think they're alluding to the fact that they don't like the current PA, or maybe the Hamas government.  In other words they would be in favor of a two-state solution but the Palestinian Arab state would be composed of people who do not exist in reality.  You probably want to check the actual Issues page on their website, not just the shorter blurb I quoted.

Am I the only one who thinks that their Iraq policy makes sense, and is probably a good coldly pragmatic solution?

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I think they're wildly overestimating Kirkuk's oil industry, though.  Not to mention the fact that the Kurds are engaged in (albeit nonviolent) ethnic cleansing.