Congresswoman Ellen O. Tauscher is currently serving her fifth term representing California’s 10th Congressional district, which includes San Francisco’s suburbs in Contra Costa, Alameda and Solano Counties. She is a leader on defense, homeland security, high-tech, transportation and veterans’ issues and is one of Congress’s leading experts on nuclear nonproliferation. As a New Democrat and Blue Dog, her fiscally responsible, bipartisan, independent brand of leadership was coined “Tauscherism” by Time magazine.
As National Vice Chair of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, Rep. Tauscher travels across the country meeting with elected officials and building a base of New Democrats for state and national office. Rep. Tauscher has served on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and chaired the group’s Democratic Business Forum. She is also a past Finance Chair of the New Democrat Network.
Rep. Tauscher has been called one of the “50 most powerful people in politics
and….?
Did you leave any pertinent information out of your blog entry? 🙂
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Black & White missions 32-bits of colors
The problem with the media and society at large is that everything gets lumped. Democrat or Republican. Gun control or NRA. Nick or Jessica.
Personally, I don’t fall into any definable category. I’m for the right to bear arms, but you have to have the personal responsibility that comes along with them. I think abortion is murder, plain and simple. I think organized religion is good for some, but not for me. I believe you have the right to be gay/lesbian/bisexual/bestial/necrophiliac as long as it doesn’t involve me or my dead cat. I believe in tort reform, but if a company really f**ked up, then they should be forced to pay large, and not through insurance.
Congresswoman Tausher is a Democrat and votes along “Republican” lines, eh? Then good for her. Because I’m damn sure the majority of Americans fall somewhere between the left and the right. The media has to show you the extremems, because I wouldn’t watch a show about me because I’m essentially boring. But don’t confuse what the media show us as being the essence of America.
We need a new political party to form. I’ve always been partial to the “Common Sense Party”. Nothing reactionary, just what makes sense. Maybe when I win the lottery I make a “Brewster’s Millions” run at it 🙂
My $.02 Weed
Middle-of-the-road
Before Barnson.org became “Half-baked opinions, served lukewarm”, the motto was “Extreme Centrist”. I’m the kind of guy, on most things, where I intentionally choose a middle-of-the-road path between two extremes because I think that’s generally the most sensible course. It won’t please the extremists, but it will please most of the people toward the center of the bell curve of opinion.
I’m a Republican who thinks my party needs to reform to include an awful lot of Democratic values. As the party of the majority of the “hunters” and “gun-rights activists”, I think the party should be all over the environmental issues, since these are the people that are actually out in nature the most. Rather than the “party of the powerful and rich” as it now is, I think a Republican form of government should really strive to represent the common man more, explaining how representative (read: republican) government is better for most of us than a pure democracy.
But, alas, I don’t write the party platform statements. I actually snoozed… erm, that is, read through both the Dems and Reps platform documents before the last election, and found enough stuff I objected to in both to prevent me from wanting to make any change of my current position.
A party that embraced the middle-class, and worked for social justice while at the same time preserving important cultural norms which have evolved as reasonable practices to prevent anarchy? A party which decided to keep its nose out of the really controversial “gray area” issues, make personal liberty a paramount requirement, and wasn’t part of the lunatic fringe itself? I might join such a party. But the Libertarians, Constitutionalists, and Greens aren’t it.
I suspect such a party would not be successful, in large part, because it would be seen as “weak” and “not willing to take a stand”. Well, that would be the point. And it would rock. The more government is bogged down in minutiae, bargaining with itself, and staying out of my life, the happier I am…
—
Matthew P. Barnson
extreme centrist
Before Barnson.org became “Half-baked opinions, served lukewarm”, the motto was “Extreme Centrist”.
Isn’t that like being a “Fundamentalist Agnostic”?
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Like an…
Yeah, like an Evangelical Secularist 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson
or
Or a Creationist Biologist.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Or
Or a Monogamistic gigolo