The characteristics needed for a healthy moderate third party

This is the third article in a series designed to share the experience I gained as an officer in a moderate American third party.

"Man filling out Voter Registration Application with USA flag in background" by wuestenigel is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This is a guest post presented by the National Gazette. Opinions expressed are the author’s own.

By Dale Ritchie

It must be a difficult task to form and build a moderate party because so very many of them are born and die within a very few years. As the former national chair of one, I came to understand how not even moderates truly appreciate what it would actually take to attract other moderates to a party. 

Models for what a moderate political party should be and should do are often mistakenly drawn from the two major parties. These two parties are both ideological, resource rich, secure in their influence, and pay only lip service to integrity, improving voter choices and serving their constituents. These are all the exact opposite of a moderate’s focus and so, unsurprisingly, a moderate party acting like these parties is doing little more than strolling through a toxic waste site, surrounded by minefields and mutant prides of hungry lions.  

This is, however, normal for how moderate parties tend to operate. They try to make ideological platforms, run in resource intensive races, and avoid making innovative new “third pole” solutions. They claim to be service oriented but do not mention specific plans to make their constituent’s lives better. They do not go door to door and talk with the people they claim to want to serve. They talk a lot about election reform when it is clearly a very long time before they will be able to make any changes. To be successful, a moderate third party will need a different game plan than what the failed moderate third parties have tried. They need to stand for what moderates stand for and quit trying to act like the major parties. 

Let’s talk about what they should stand for first and then how they fail when they don’t.