Give ‘Uniparty’ a Chance
Sept.22, 2023
Cooperation, collaboration, compromise are dirty words to some.
But if you want to really get their blood boiling, just say “uniparty.” That’s their epithet for the Republicans and Democrats who have a few ideas in common, share some common goals, and on occasion even work together for the common good.
The very thought sends them into a deep dither. In the minds of hardliners, the mainline factions of the two political parties are virtually interchangeable, tools of the deep state that controls the nation’s capital and thereby the nation.
“Uniparty” is not a thing, it’s a putdown.
Steve Bannon reincarnated the term (originated perhaps by Ralph Nader back in 2000) in support of Donald Trump’s 2016 “drain-the-swamp” campaign against the Washington establishment. From that time period, here are a couple of opinions quoted in Politico magazine:
Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation wrote in an editorial for Reason: “The two parties – actually the two divisions of the Uniparty that represents the permanent regime – agree on all fundamentals.”
Alexander Marlow, editor in chief of Breitbart News Network, said in an interview with Ann Coulter: “I’m becoming more obsessed with this Uniparty in Washington, where the Republicans and Democrats seem to be fusing together.”
These quotes are now a little long in the tooth but that does not mean the idea has gone away. It reared its head again this summer as ultraconservatives raged over the bipartisan agreement to increase the debt ceiling.
The New York Times reported hardliners “railed against what some far-right lawmakers refer to derisively as the ‘Uniparty,’ the group of mainstream Republicans and Democrats, including party leaders, who have routinely banded together to do the necessary business of funding the government.
That task is now front and center as those very same far-right lawmakers hold hostage the spending bills for the fiscal year set to begin on Oct. 1.
The disparaging aspersion of “Uniparty” is directed at those who try to keep government on something approaching a steady course. In the minds of those who want to dramatically alter that course, nothing could be worse.
The rabbit hole is a dark one. Those who descend into it conjure up the hidden forces of the “Liberal World Order” pulling the strings, warn that solutions to this problem will have to come from outside the ballot box, and almost eagerly anticipate the eventual downfall of the nation as we know it.
The supposed pawns in this scheme, according to something called the Freedom First Network, are the Democrats and Republicans who “pretend to be on opposite sides of the aisle but other than the radical progressives such as ‘The Squad’ and the America First patriots like most in the House Freedom Caucus, the majority work well together in the murky middle.”
The sentence, difficult as it is to parse, shows why those on the far right are so caught up in warning about something that doesn’t exist. The extreme elements in the House of Representatives wouldn’t be able to control the proceedings in Congress, as they are now doing with the federal budget, if the majority in the murky middle could actually bring themselves to work together.
Members of the murky middle call it a “two-party solution.” Middle-of-the-road Democrats working with middle-of-the-road Republicans. Middle-of-the-road Republicans working with middle-of-the-road Democrats.
Unfortunately for us, politics as usual prevents this from occurring any more often than a blue moon. Lawmakers who are willing to work across the aisle are up against political tradition, parliamentary rules of the House, and threats of political retribution.
It’s time though to turn the tables. Rather than fleeing from the supposed boogeyman of the Uniparty, we should be embracing the notion. If the majority in the murky middle would work together on constructive solutions, we could short-circuit a lot of the extremist shenanigans that are stymying the legislative process. Even the name Uniparty is palatable. Maybe we can turn the connotation into a good one.
With the House careening toward a government shutdown, or in desperation a last-minute stopgap measure to put that off a while, responsible lawmakers of both parties need to step forward to do the right thing not just at this moment but at all times. The House’s Problem Solvers Caucus, made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, did just that yesterday by putting forward a bipartisan compromise that would fund the government through Jan. 11.
By the very definition of the concept, the Uniparty could represent a novel, across-the-aisle approach to legislating. And working together in that fashion is what most Americans, according to all the polling done for Our Common Purpose, want to see.
–Richard Gilman