Word: centrists
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...meantime, the political players are working hard on their revised scripts. The major parties are all centrist, but some policy distinctions are becoming clear, even though they cut across current party lines. Within the L.D.P., for example, many endorse the carefully articulated demands of Hosokawa's main strategist and political ally, Ichiro Ozawa, for a more "normal" Japan, meaning a country that can participate readily in military actions mandated by the United Nations or its own allies. Within the Hosokawa coalition, on the other hand, many, including the Prime Minister and chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Takemura, are more at home...
...next challenge for Clinton will be to construct similar centrist coalitions to pass health-care reform, welfare reform and other contentious initiatives. The NAFTA group "is not really a coalition at all," said a White House official. "It just proves that anytime you get the business community behind something, you get a lot of Republicans. And anytime you get the President, you get a third of the Democratic Party." Indeed, days after the NAFTA vote, a similar group of moderate Democrats and Republicans was poised to approve $90 billion in budget cuts sponsored by John Kasich of Ohio...
Until the NAFTA vote last week, Clinton was a New Democrat in name only. Though his rhetoric often sounded centrist, he had saved most of his energy to keep promises that fit neatly into the tax-and-spend rhythm of the old Democratic Party. But in NAFTA Clinton embraced a treaty fashioned by Republicans, ignored the advice of many around him and defeated a majority in his own party. This time Clinton earned his New Democrat stripes. "Some fights are definitional," said House minority whip Newt Gingrich, whose party provided most of the votes, "and this was one of them...
This year's elections highlighted the sectionalist nature of Canada's voting public. In the West, the Reform Party--the newest version of the corruption--plagued Social Credit or "SoCred" Party--took the majority in British Columbia and Alberta. The New Democrats, who are less centrist than the Liberals and do not really exist east of the Continental Divide, were cut from 35 seats to eight...
...wasn't about to tell the country otherwise. He had seen the fate of past liberal Presidential candidates, and realized that a "traditional" Democrat had little chance. And while conservative pundits spent their time denouncing the far-left positions of his wife, Clinton managed to present himself as a centrist leader, independent of the liberal party line. It was a brilliant campaign, deftly executed. It just wasn't true...