The ORI Project: The search for high-nooners and neocentrists

The search for high-nooners and neocentrists

Posted by Frith on 10/12/2009, 12:03 am

I am a big champion for moderates and centrists and I very much want to see more of them taking over within the government and in the media. I tend to believe that most Americans are, like me, quite disgruntled with the way the far left and the far right get all the attention and get to run the show. We ordinary folks are caught in the middle of all the partisan sniping and, at the end of the day, wind up pretty much being left out in the cold.

So I find myself being forever on the lookout for well-informed, sincere, influential thinkers and leaders who are "high-nooners" politically--and especially those whom I call neocentrists: the ones who once were much further out toward the fringes, but have, for whatever reason, decided to move in closer to the center.

(High-nooner is another term I just invented. Think of the political spectrum as a clock. Extreme lefties, like Cindy Sheehan and Fidel Castro would be over there at about 7 to 8 o'clock. Right-wingers, like Rush Limbaugh and, let's say, Hitler would be somewhere around 4 to 5 o'oclock. The rest of us are somewhere around noon, give or take. I consider myself to be slightly left of center, or perhaps around 11 o'clock. And the people I want empowered in government and the media are those who fall between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. Obviously, many of those are going to be Democrats, just as many Republicans, and probably a growing share, independents. Make sense?)

So, what do you say we start keeping tabs on who the moderates and the neocentrists are? I'll start the list...and you all might want to add names to it as you think of them. Here are a few people who immediately come to mind whom I have recently developed a new respect for, either because they seem to have begun moving somewhat toward the center, or else because I know more about them now than I once did:

Sen. Lindsey Graham
Sen. John McCain
Michael Moore
George Stephanopolis
Shepherd Smith
Richard Haas
Juan Williams
Mike Barnacle
Cal Thomas

Okay...I could go on. But I will leave to you to finish the list. Meanwhile, I will be on the lookout for others who need to be recruited onto our team.