The Moderate Party

The RI chapter of NOW isn't the only group whose attention my run has attracted. I recently got a letter from the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, which was created last year by a Barrington business owner named Ken Block. Taken as a whole, Block's positions -- term limits for state legislators, a two-year term limit for the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, stringent ethics rules, and general lowering of taxes and spending -- are actually a reprise of old-fashioned limited-government conservatism.

Block has a point when he states that this is a position that is no longer favored by either major party. The Republicans used to believe in limited government, or said they did, but since the Newt Gingrich radicals have seized control of the national GOP, that party is now more closely associated with intrusive government and untrammeled executive power. The Rhode Island GOP now finds itself tainted by its association with the national party's disastrous policies, and small-government conservatives now have nowhere to go but the Libertarian Party, which suffers from its own form of ideological extremism.

Ken Block's way is not my way. I'm not a moderate, as I think my policy positions make clear. I do, however, recognize the inherent danger of having a government dominated by one political party. If Ken Block can build his Moderate Party into a political force capable of providing a reasonable alternative to the Democrats, then more power to him. So to speak.