Andrew Yang and his ex-Republican allies David Jolly and Christine Todd Whitman published an op-ed in The Washington Post touting their new party, the Forward Party, as an antidote to the extremism and divisiveness they see in American politcs today. The three of them wrote:

Political extremism is ripping our nation apart, and the two major parties have failed to remedy the crisis.....

The United States badly needs a new political party — one that reflects the moderate, common-sense majority. Today’s outdated parties have failed by catering to the fringes. As a result, most Americans feel they aren’t represented....

The two major parties have hollowed out the sensible center of our political system — even though that’s where most voters want to see them move.... On every issue facing this nation — from the controversial to the mundane — we can find a reasonable approach most Americans agree on.

So let's see what happened in Washington a day after this op-ed appeared:

Forty-one Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan compromise bill on Wednesday that would expand health care for veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals while serving. Every one of those no votes came from a Republican senator who had previously pledged to support military veterans and their health care.

Twenty-four of the senators who voted no had voted for a nearly identical bill just weeks ago.

Their flip-flops came shortly after Senate Democrats announced a major agreement on a budget reconciliation package that would invest in climate change action, health care, and fighting inflation — efforts the GOP minority has fiercely opposed.

And what else? Oh, yes -- this:

Sen. Susan Collins, one of a handful of GOP senators working to garner support in her party for a bill to codify gay marriage, said the Democrats’ surprise embrace of a tax and climate change bill made her job much harder.

“I just think the timing could not have been worse and it came totally out of the blue,” the Maine senator told HuffPost Thursday about Senate Democrats’ unveiling of their bill to raise taxes on some companies, boost IRS enforcement and spend the resulting money to fund anti-climate change efforts.

... Collins warned that the manner in which that victory was secured, where it appeared Democrats kept ... negotiations under wraps until a separate bipartisan computer chip production incentive bill was passed by the Senate, hurt the effort to gather support among Republicans to bring the gay marriage bill to the floor.

“After we just had worked together successfully on gun safety legislation, on the CHIPs bill, it was a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way,” she said.

The Forward Party says it was formed to combat polarization and government dysfunction, yet here are two obvious examples of Republicans refusing to sign on to popular legislation because they want to punish the other party for an unrelated bill, instead of endorsing "a reasonable approach most Americans agree on" regarding these two issues -- and what is the Forward Party's response?

Absolute silence. There's nothing about either of these acts of legislative sabotage on the Forward Party's website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. Andrew Yang has nothing to say about it, nor do Christie Whitman and David Jolly.

If you want to persuade us that you're the remedy for the dysfunction that results when one of our major parties fights the other, you'd think you might want to condemn such fighting when it's actually happening, especially when you have the media's attention. Maybe you could say, "Members of the Forward Party will never vote to reject a good bill because we want to punish another party. We pledge to do what's right for Americans, even if another party gets the credit." That's an unenforceable promise, but at least it would suggest a specific approach to governing and politicking.

But these folks don't care. They just want to disrupt the system because they think they might gain power from the disruption. Maybe they don't want to attack the Republican Party more than the Democratic Party, but I'm not sure that's what's holding them back. I think they're not particularly outraged by political dysfunction -- they just believe it's creating a market niche.

Published with permission from No More Mr. Nice Blog