Consent Of The Governed Under Review

William A. Galston and former Bush speechwriter David Frum, writing about (as MK suggests) the latest iteration of Richard Nixon's silent majority:

On Dec. 13, more than 1,000 citizens from the 50 states will convene in New York to change the odds. They are founding a movement - No Labels. Among them will be Democrats, Republicans and independents who are proud of their political affiliations and have no intention of abandoning them. A single concern brings them together: the hyper-polarization of our politics that thwarts an adult conversation about our common future. A single goal unites them: to expand the space within which citizens and elected officials can conduct that conversation without fear of social or political retribution.

I wish I could go. Instead, I "liked" No Labels on Facebook (and had already asked for an "Of no party or clique" t-shirt for Christmas).

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten

The Silent Majority Always Endures

From "The League of Ordinary Gentlemen":

After decades of gripping tightly to a self-conception founded on Richard Nixon’s idea of the “Silent Majority“–and to be fair, that self-concept was not without objective justification–the grass roots conservatives, after a period of cognitive dissonance in which they tried to convince themselves we were still a “center right nation,” is recognizing that the Silent Majority has become the Silent Minority.

Ah, but for President Nixon the silent majority was never a grassroots conservative coalition but a center-dwelling one, people appalled by the far left's Vietnam-era shenanigans but also unmoved by purist Goldwater-Reagan conservatism. RN envisioned the U.S. not as a center-right but a moderate nation. The silent majority is always there for the picking, as President Obama may have discovered.