If you are a political junkie, Cenk Uygur is big news these days. Uygur is a left-wing media commentator and host/creator of the popular online multimedia outlet “The Young Turks.” He recently was a guest speaker at “AmericaFest,” the annual meeting of Charlie Kirk’s right-wing political nonprofit, Turning Point USA.
The almost exclusively Republican AmericaFest crowd gave Uygur a standing ovation. Uygur’s appearance resulted in vitriol from both sides of the political aisle, with some right-wing pundits accusing MAGA of becoming a “left-wing movement” and a certain semi-coherent left-wing former sportscaster labeling Uygur, a seeming traitor to leftism, as a “gullible” “crank.”
Despite Uygur’s bona fides as a supporter of all things leftist, and despite the fact that his epiphany seemed to have occurred only after the events of Nov. 5, 2024, I believe the sort of détente evidenced by Uygur’s appearance on the Turning Point USA stage is healthy for America and could signal a way forward to solve many of our nation’s political failings.
Since at least the “hanging chad” presidential election of 2000, America’s two major political parties have been at each other’s throats, with vicious political rhetoric leading sometimes to violence such as the George Floyd riots of the summer of 2020, the Antifa assault on the White House that same year, and the incursion into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While I blame the Democrats and their constant slander of Republicans as “racists” and “Nazis” for virtually all the deepest political hate, the simple fact is that a country constantly on the verge of true political violence is a potential recipe for civil war and Rwandan-style factions.
Anything that tamps down the smoldering embers of political violence is a good thing, in my opinion, and Uygur’s appearance at AmericaFest — and Charlie Kirk’s willingness to have him — represents such a positive development. But I believe this event also signals how American voters can collectively fix the problem of the so-called “uniparty.”
The Framework
Let me start by declaring that I hate the term “uniparty” and believe it denotes an untrue state of affairs. In reality, we have two very separate and distinct major political parties in the United States, with each party having disparate and clearly distinct policy preferences on important matters such as abortion, gun rights, health care, taxation, wealth redistribution, Israel, Ukraine, war, and the role of government in our lives.
However, these two distinct political parties are bound by a framework of extraconstitutional and informal norms inside which both parties’ leaders choose to operate. It is that framework that binds and encompasses both parties like an electrified fence line that I believe voters really mean when they talk about the “uniparty,” and I’ll henceforth refer to that phenomenon in this article as the “framework.”
What is the framework? It is everything that enriches and empowers the denizens of the D.C. Beltway in any way the Constitution and Founding Fathers never intended. The framework is the endless revolving door between elected office, a post-congressional job in industry, being a lobbyist, and being a media “pundit.” The framework is the disguised influence peddling of exorbitant “speaking fees” and massive book advances for ghost-written autobiographic tomes that almost immediately end up on the $1.99 discount rack. The framework is congressional staffers having more power than the elected leaders they ostensibly serve.
The framework is also the military-industrial complex that promotes useless, endless wars that maim and kill our brave service members for no reason of actual national interest, and the generals and admirals who so eagerly enrich themselves inside defense contractors after retiring from active duty. The framework is industries writing the laws that regulate them. It’s Congress delegating its sacred, constitutional lawmaking authority to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats inside the executive branch.
The framework is geriatric congressional leadership that never faces a true primary election challenge. The framework is donors, not voters, picking candidates and ineffective campaign finance laws. The framework is senators believing they are unaccountable royalty. It’s the feeding trough both parties pull up to like a charismatic pig from an Orwell novel. The framework is everything ordinary voters in both parties rightfully despise about the American political system.
So if hatred of the framework is a shared, bipartisan emotion, why is it so hard to defeat? If the rank-and-file voters of both parties eagerly want to solve this problem, why is the problem so intractable? A big reason is the slanderous rhetoric I mentioned earlier. When the rank and file of both parties believe the other side is evil incarnate, joining together to solve any problem becomes impossible. How can you join with someone you think is literally a Nazi? How can you join with someone who libels you as a misogynist, racist, fascist homophobe?
Working Together To Beat It
You cannot. That’s why the conciliatory overtures by Cenk Uygur and Turning Point USA are so important. While many commentators think Uygur is an infiltrator and Turning Point USA is foolish for letting the enemy inside the walls, if we are ever going to solve the framework, we need this sort of philosophical rapprochement. Uygur is not going to become MAGA, and Turning Point USA is not going to start putting tampons in its men’s bathrooms. However, if both sides can see past the hate, maybe they can work together to dissolve the framework and restore populist, mostly noncorrupt constitutional governance. But how to work together in a material way?
The answer does not lie in creating a third party. We will never see MAGA and Bernie Bros uniting behind a candidate because the purely ideological concerns of both groups are too wildly distinct. In the non-parliamentary U.S. system, third parties result in Bill Clinton getting elected with only 43 percent of the popular vote thanks to Ross Perot, with Slick Willie then claiming to have a mandate that a majority of voters opposed. A third party is not only not the answer, it is a practical impossibility.
The answer instead lies in cross-party coordination without ever compromising either party’s core policy preferences. Imagine two countries with long histories of cross-border ethnic conflict and completely different economic and governing philosophies. Imagine further that these two countries both suddenly face a cross-border, deadly viral pandemic. In such circumstances, even the most estranged of national adversaries will have the good sense to coordinate a means to contain the pandemic. That’s what we need as rank-and-file voters of both parties.
What we need instead of a third party is a powerful, populist, bipartisan, well-funded political action committee whose sole purpose is to make the voters in both parties understand the evils of the framework and promote anti-framework candidates and practices inside each party without ever once trying to (or even hinting at) changing the core values, beliefs, and policy preferences of either party. We must unite in such a limited way that we can defeat the virus that is the framework, without ever once losing sight of the fact that a functioning two-party system with legitimately distinct beliefs and values is healthy for America, so long as that system exists under the Constitution, without the framework and the corruption it engenders.
This is going to be harder for Democrats than it will be for Republicans. MAGA has already overtaken the traditional GOP, with outsiders seizing control against the wishes of much of the framework — and despite the continued existence of many congressional, media, voter, and donor “RINOs.” The Democrats, on the other hand, have arguably not allowed their voters to select their own presidential candidate since Obama in 2008, and perhaps longer. What the Democrats need is their own version of the Tea Party — a movement that adheres to the core principles that Democrat voters value, while at the same time attacking the corruption and political entropy that make those voters’ wishes mostly unattainable.
What I just described sounds like a tall and perhaps impossible order, I know.
But watch the full discussion between Cenk Uygur and Charlie Kirk. It’s on YouTube. It is 25 minutes of truly revolutionary rhetoric. They are both saying exactly what I am saying in this article. They both want to defeat the framework. They both want to defeat the “uniparty.” Uygur and Kirk are that first purple flower poking through the last snows of spring. Embrace it. Don’t fight it. We on the right can defeat the framework without embracing the policy preferences of Cenk Uygur and his rank-and-file Democrat brethren. It can work.
Republicans, Cenk Uygur is not a Trojan horse. Democrats, MAGA is not evil, and Charlie Kirk is not really your enemy. Populism is good on both sides of the aisle. Let’s all tamp down the flaming rhetoric of partisan hatred, join together to defeat the framework, and do all of that without ever once compromising our core principles. We can defeat the literal corruption that has overtaken our political system. It is possible.
Jesus Christ is King
