The Big Tent Perplex UPDATED

When reading Tom Maguire’s continued perspicacious coverage of the Affair Joseph C. Wilson, I found myself wondering about the nature of our Big Tent political parties and how they dumb us down to almost farcical degrees. Consider this, two recent Democratic Party heroes — Michael Moore and Wilson — are in reality diametrically opposed to each other. Moore goes on to anybody in the solar system who will hear him about Bush’s ties to Saudi Arabia, how bad the Saudis are, etc., while Wilson, an Arabist, has spent much of his life doing business with, frequently being supported by, those same Saudis. The only thing these gentlemen appear to hold in common, other than a seeming disinterest in facts, is a disdain for Bush. And yet the faithful applaud both. Big Tent indeed – how about humungous and eventually meaningless? This is politics as a quasi religious sport at its purist. “Our team is red hot. Your team ain’t diddly squat.” Maybe it’s time for some kind of evaluation of our two party system as we know it. Nothing lasts forever… not even Classic Coke.

UPDATE: The appearance of this new book (referred to by Catherine Johnson) by a former Giuliani speech writer may be the harbinger of a new centrist political party.
Consider this: If a candidate like Giuliani or Schwarzenegger (I know, he can’t, but arguendo…) were running for President right now, he might sweep to a huge victory. Strong on defense, fiscally responsible, but (unlike Bush) socially liberal… sounds like a large part of the electorate to me – the growing American middle. No wonder those are two of the keynote speakers at the Republican Convention.