The Centrist Manifesto

The left half of the red, and the right half of the blue.

The two party system has failed us. While it was simple to think about a country in two opposing ideologies and keep it a polarized zero sum game, we also created a tribal division that is hurting America more gravely than climate change, the wealth gap or gun violence. The two party system is the foundation for the next civil war, which will burn down all prosperity and destroy what peace we have left.

It’s time for us to form a party that wins hearts and minds from the middle 50% of America’s political spectrum. After all, this is where the good people are.

Americans are hardworking, fun loving, great people. We love our friends and families, we’re proud of our work, we’re happy to do well and share our success, and we teach our children to dream big. This must continue.

We have grown a tumor on the left and another on the right. We’re the unwitting host to cancerous growth on both flanks, and we must leave those ideologies behind as we cut the cancer out. Rather than focus on the bad, let’s celebrate the greatness that we’ll build by combining the best ideas from the two parties and some new ones on top.

We will build a new platform — entirely new. Yes, it will borrow what is good from the center-leaning sides of both the GOP and the Democratic Party, and it will embody some ideas wholly new and quite foreign to the political class.

From the Left Half of the Red Party (Conservative-Leaning Centrism)

• Individual Liberty as Paramount: Prioritize personal freedoms, including freedom of speech and religion, as non-negotiable rights that government must protect, not encroach upon.
• Limited Government Intervention: Advocate for a laissez-faire approach where markets and individuals operate with minimal regulatory interference, trusting people to innovate and self-regulate.Your freedom to swing your fist ends before it makes contact with any living being.
• Strong National Defense with Restraint: Support a robust military to ensure security, but lean toward non-interventionism unless directly threatened, reflecting a cautious, practical conservatism.
• Fair Taxation with Relief for the Bottom Half: Simplify the tax code to lighten the burden on the lower 50% of earners through lower rates or credits, while increasing capital gains taxes on the top 2% to ensure the wealthiest contribute more without punitive income tax hikes; oppose tariffs and consumption taxes (e.g., VAT) that disproportionately hit working families and stifle free trade.
• Community-Driven Solutions: Encourage local and private initiatives over federal mandates, believing that people closest to problems are best equipped to solve them.
• Law and Order with Balanced Justice: Enforce a system that rewards rehabilitation for first-time offenders through effective programs (e.g., job training, counseling), but imposes stricter penalties on repeat offenders to deter crime; prioritize public health and safety — ensuring streets and communities are secure — over catering to the needs of the chronically downtrodden.
• Foster enterprise, achievement and creativity: remind ourselves and all around us that all problems can be solved and that human ingenuity can solve most problems. Encourage dreamers, adventure and be tolerant of failures on the way to success.
• Promote education: regardless of ambition, inspiration, calling and confidence, all of us can become better people through learning.

From the Right Half of the Blue Party (Liberal-Leaning Centrism)

• Pragmatic Social Safety Nets: Support modest, efficient programs (e.g., healthcare subsidies or job training) that help people help themselves, without sprawling bureaucracies or dependency.
• Economic Opportunity for All: Promote a free-market system that ensures fair access to competition, resisting overregulation while rejecting monopolistic excesses that stifle innovation. Unlike DEI, this pillar will assure equal opportunity, but not equal outcomes. It will protect all from exclusionary tactics, but demand that all players show up and give their best effort.
• Environmental Responsibility with Innovation: Foster climate solutions through market-driven innovation (e.g., tax incentives for clean tech, research grants), avoiding punitive regulations or bans on traditional energy and transportation sectors like oil, gas, or automotive industries; balance progress with economic stability. This is critical for the protection of entrepreneurs who may come under attack for profiting after receiving government assistance.
• Inclusive Civic Discourse: Uphold freedom of speech as a unifying principle, encouraging diverse viewpoints while rejecting censorship or ideological conformity from any side.
• Merit-Based Immigration with Economic Focus: Advocate for secure borders and a streamlined legal immigration system that prioritizes merit — skills, education, and proven economic contribution — over wealth-based entry; favor immigrants who fill labor gaps, start businesses, or drive growth, without requiring them to “buy” their way in through excessive financial thresholds.

Shared Centrist Principles

• Freedom of Speech Above All: Defend the right to express ideas — popular or not — as the bedrock of a free society, opposing any attempts to silence dissent.
• Freedom of Religion Without Compromise: Protect individuals’ rights to practice their faith or none at all, free from government overreach or favoritism.
• Laissez-Faire Economic Core: Champion free markets as the engine of prosperity, resisting burdensome regulations that choke small businesses or innovation.
• Resistance to Over regulation: Push back against bureaucratic creep, ensuring laws serve people, not the other way around.
• Taxation That’s Fair, Not Punitive: Ease the tax load on the lower 50% to boost their economic mobility, fund essentials by raising capital gains on the top 2%, and reject tariffs and consumption taxes (e.g., VAT) that punish everyday spending or global trade — all while keeping the system simple and transparent.
• Climate Policy with Practicality: Drive environmental progress through innovation and voluntary adoption, not heavy-handed mandates; support a diverse energy mix that includes traditional sources, ensuring affordability and reliability while encouraging cleaner alternatives.

What are we throwing overboard?

From the red party:

• Populist tendencies that identify working class victims and elite villains
• Excessive nationalism and xenophobia
• Market Protectionism
• Guardians of the status quo
• Church as dictator
• Anti-science thinking

From the blue party:

• Sanctimony around race and gender; attacking those who don’t fully align with woke mindset
• Populist hatred of the wealthy — ideas founded in envy and bitterness
• Fear of technological innovation and progress
• Victimhood as an offering to underprivileged groups
• Illusion of scarcity
• Techno-pessimism and anti-tech thinking

New ideas

These concepts are foreign to most politicians and pundits. We will implement them because voters like them and they work.

Technology

• We actively foster an environment that attracts and protects venture capital and founders, as well as workers, interns, immigrants and communities.
• We protect intellectual property and incorporate into foreign policy the American ownership of American inventions

Education

• We actively work to dissolve the elite status of higher education, extending its reach into low income families and communities.
• We foster advanced studies for gifted students
• We actively nurture upskilling programs for laid off workers
• We offer mobility incentives for workers in high unemployment areas and incentives for employers to move to where available labor is

Immigration

• We close the borders to all illegal immigration
• We modernize legal immigration to be extremely fast and efficient for all legitimate applicants
• We prioritize in-demand skills
• We encourage entrepreneurs and bright people to come on down
• We deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes

Public Health and Safety

• The federal government will supplement city and local police and first responder services in cities lacking the revenues to fund sufficient policing
• Artificial intelligence will be used to protect citizens from cybercrimes and digital scams.
• AI will also be deployed to monitor suspicious domestic terrorist activity, and when necessary will arrest suspect shooters before they can kill anyone

Health and Human Services

• Health insurance will become an option that middle class and wealthy people may choose. Basic health insurance will be offered to all US citizens and those legally resident in the country

Labor

• The Federal government will publish quarterly and annual labor demand dashboard, helping communities understand where is demand moving and what skills are most sought after

Foreign Policy

• The United States of America will redesign its brand to present a more lovable soft power image. It will export culture and promote free market democracy, rather than get entangled in forever wars and regional conflicts
• American military power will be technologically advanced but used as deterrent force

Policy specifics

Immigration, border and enforcement:

• Build that wall
• Immigration needs to be legal
• Merit based immigration visa approvals
• Eliminate gang members and criminals
• Improve and accelerate immigration visa application process

Taxation

• Sliding scale, progressive income tax; limited to ‘a reasonable maximum’ not punitive to the wealthiest
• Eliminate consumption taxes
• Eliminate tariffs
• No unrealized gains taxes
• Limited inheritance and estate taxation — single family property no tax at all if it means forcing a sale

Health

• Healthcare for all, kind of like medicare but all who want it can have it
• No punitive measures against private health
• Vaccines are non mandatory except where herd immunity is essential to society
• Pharma prices not protected against import markets

Defense and military

• Strong deterrent
• Minimize peacekeeping forces abroad
• Reduce nation building but use soft power to build alliances and economic growth
• Promote free world free trade and western democracy globally
• Maintain global alliances and trans-national organizations to deter despot dictator expansionism

Public health and safety

• No special treatment of the downtrodden;
• Public order, clean streets, code of conduct one for all
• All violent crime is the same regardless of suspect’s color or race
• Justice system and correctional system overhaul to move toward rehabilitation, but tough on diehard criminals and repeat offenders

Philosophy

• We strive to be inclusive, fair, optimistic and behave with integrity.
• We aim to serve the majority of the population, therefore not beholden to powerful minorities, politically or financially.
• Therefore, we aim to align philosophically with the middle majority of voters and their families.
• We will likely fail to please those whose views lie on the fringes. Specifically, we will not lend support to a hate campaign, neither against wealthy people nor the underprivileged.
• We eschew populist methods. We must be accountable and take responsibility for our problems, not blame others for them or find scapegoats. Similarly, we ask that all citizens step forward to do their part in society, as nobody is owed a living. Some may be owed a safety net, and all are owed a fair shot, but from there the differences are in how we play our hand.
• We accept moderate inequality, yet we must protect citizens from oppression and manufactured poverty, irrespective the source.
• We can guarantee you only the adventure, not the outcome, not the standard of living. The safety net is not luxurious but provides essentials only.
• We protect the ladders and the access to them, not who uses them. This is to say, we do not prioritize any group of citizens as more entitled to aid or rescue.

What will far left Democrats hate about us?

• They will label us libertarians, therefore evil. While there may be some libertarian in our DNA, we do not support the owner class domination that libertarianism embraces.
• They will cry foul as we protect founders and CEOs. They believe this is anti-labor policy. We protect labor and human capital in ways that set standards and protect against rights abuses, but we do not turn against bosses who are fair. We do not endorse ideas of wealth destruction
• They will point out racism and call it endemic. Racism is hard to eradicate completely. But hiring the best people is the purview of the business leader, and we will not impose race or gender parameters on their hiring policy
• They will scream oligarchy. There have always been and always will be rich people. Destroying wealth is not a path to financial fairness. Instead, we believe in a rising tide that floats most boats, but not all.

What will MAGA Republicans hate about us?

• They will call us European style weaklings. The real strength lies in centrism, where the intelligent people hang their hats. We eschew rabid policy and fanatical nationalism. We believe real opportunity thrives in an open and competitive society.
• They’ll play the God card. Freedom includes freedom of religion. Enough said.