THE GARFIELD PARTY

Founded July 4th 2026

The far left and the far right are sheltering the same idiots.

THE GARFIELD PARTY

Now You Have a Home

America is trapped between two polarized parties.
Our approach will succeed where others have failed.

Why We Can Win Explore The Issues

Why The Garfield Party Can Succeed

Most third parties chase the presidency and lose.

We focus first on local, House, and Senate races.

Even a few seats can change the balance of power.

Reasons The Garfield Party Can Succeed

  • Most third parties chase the presidency and lose.
  • We focus first on House and Senate races where even a few seats can change the balance of power.
  • Other parties are Libertarian, Green, Socialist, or vague centrists.
  • We focus on practical solutions across major issues.
  • Extreme polarization between the two major parties
    has created an unprecedented opening for a new voice.
Join the Movement

WHY THE SMART MIDDLE EXISTS

Almost exactly 145 years ago one of the best presidents to ever lead this country was assassinated by a man with mental illness seeking his share of the “Spoils System”. It ushered in reforms facilitated by the Pendleton Act (1883), giving us a merit based system of governance. We enjoyed it, for a while at least. James A. Garfield did not die in vain!

Having forgotten one of history’s biggest lessons, we voted in the most openly corrupt President since that time. Handed to us by the deep frustration, many of us feel, after having been abandoned by the Democratic party.

Allow us to present a case as to why, short of winning the presidency (at this time), a viable third party can and should exist and change this country for the better.

America is not suffering from a lack of intelligence, energy, or resources. It is suffering from the absence of a muscular middle that takes on the insanity on the far left and the far right with the same fervor they use to propagate their messages of fear while being hypocrites themselves. From a billionaire who got rich with government help and certainly by the infrastructure  this country offers only to be incensed about paying taxes to $600k per year firefighters still claiming to be part of the working class and still ready to strike for more. Enough!

The selling of fantasies:

The Far Right

In stunning consistency, the recipe for success is always a harking back to a sanitized version of history and dominion over others. From the Athenians in 416 BC proclaiming “The strong do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must” to “Make Germany Great Again” coined by the master propagandist and monster Joseph Goebbels in the 1930s to the United States demanding Greenland beginning in 2018. Find enemies to blame, then dehumanize them. Arrest opponents and release your supporters. Blame news organizations that critique you and crank up your own propaganda.
Objectify women into supportive child bearers, cat owning or not. Always set out to subdue or destroy your enemies.
Trust corporations to solve everything.

The Far Left

As long as you give people on the socio-economic bottom more stuff they will get better. If you ask anything of them in return you are wrong. After we are done punishing you for that, you will get better too.
In a meritless system where you get promoted by time on the job or connections, costs will not go up, efficiency will not go down. Corruption will not become endemic. Innovation will not be stifled.
After granting rent-control to a privileged few, rents will not go up for the rest of you.
Culture wars do not divide us: The rights of a given segment of the populace, however small, do by definition, override the rights or needs of everyone else.
Affirmative action does not hurt largely innocent people in order to undo harm they did not themselves cause.
You can trust government to create a new rule to solve everything.

Independent Movement

Congress-First Strategy

Solutions Over Ideology

A New National Voice

The Issues Americans Care About

America’s biggest challenges deserve serious discussion.
While the major parties offer vague promises, we offer a clear
path forward to make this country the best it can be.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

They treat voters like infants. Any attempt to confirm voting integrity is seen as racist. Third parties are encouraged in theory and condemned in practice. Reform is welcomed until it becomes politically inconvenient.

The Far Right

They say they support freedom and self-government, yet many continue to repeat claims about elections that are blatantly false. At the same time, many oppose reforms that would increase competition, participation, and voter choice because the current system benefits those already in power.

The Smart Middle

Most Americans are not represented by either political party. Yet the system is designed to make sure they have nowhere else to go.

We are told we live in a democracy, but millions of voters enter every election knowing their preferred candidate has little chance of competing. They are pressured to vote against someone rather than for someone. They are told to choose the lesser evil and be grateful for the opportunity.

The two major parties have built a system that protects themselves first and foremost. Safe districts, closed primaries, ballot access barriers, and winner-take-all elections all serve the same purpose: preserving the duopoly.

The Smart Middle supports open primaries and ranked-choice voting.

Open primaries allow every voter to participate, not just the most partisan activists.

Ranked-choice voting allows citizens to vote for the candidate they actually prefer without fear of “wasting” their vote.

Competition improves products. Competition improves ideas. Competition improves government. In short it improves the United States of America.

The two major parties tell us they are locked in an existential struggle for the future of America. Yet somehow they always find common ground when it comes to protecting their own monopoly.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Government agencies become permanent institutions that are rarely reformed, rarely challenged, and almost never held accountable for poor performance. Bureaucracies grow. Results become optional. Employees are rewarded for time on the job not for performance.

The Far Right

Government jobs become rewards for political loyalty. Expertise is treated with suspicion. Career civil servants are viewed as enemies to be purged whenever power changes hands. The remaining are used to settle scores.

The Smart Middle

The modern civil service exists because President James A. Garfield was assassinated by a man who believed he was entitled to a government job.

Americans learned an important lesson from that tragedy: Government should serve citizens, not political parties.

Somehow both parties forgot.

Government employees need to be hired and promoted based on merit, performance, and professionalism. At the same time, government agencies should not be protected from scrutiny, reform, or accountability.

Political patronage is the deathknell of a democracy.

Government does not belong to politicians.

Government belongs to the people.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

The Court is sacred when it agrees with them and illegitimate when it doesn’t. They talk about norms and institutions until those norms become inconvenient.

The Far Right

The Court is sacred when it agrees with them and illegitimate when it doesn’t. They condemn power politics while practicing it with enthusiasm whenever they get the chance.

The Smart Middle

Americans are tired of being told that every constitutional crisis is unique, every power grab is justified, and every act of hypocrisy is somehow different when their side does it.

The Supreme Court has become another front in our permanent political war. Confirmation battles now resemble blood feuds. Every vacancy is treated as a national emergency, because the position is permanent unless they resign or die.

This is dysfunctional.

If Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Merrick Garland had happened in a functioning political system, it would have triggered a constitutional confrontation. If it happened when the Garfield Party had a voice, it would have never gone through, ever. Instead, the Republicans bullied and the Democrats sniffled and gave in. A few years later, the Republicans shamelessly reversed arguments and got another conservative onto the court. Same reaction from the Democrats.

Enough.

We support eighteen-year terms for Supreme Court justices. Every president would nominate two justices per term. Vacancies would become predictable. Political hysteria would decrease. No single retirement, death, or election would shape the Court for an entire generation.

The goal is not to help Democrats. The goal is not to help Republicans.

The goal is to stop treating the Supreme Court like a political hostage. Instead, the Supreme Court is part of a co-equal branch of government, which, yes, is in the constitution.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Every problem can be solved with another program, another subsidy, another spending bill, and another trillion dollars that somebody else will eventually have to repay. In the end, the debt just rises.

The Far Right

Every problem can be solved with another tax cut, another exemption, another subsidy, and another trillion dollars that somebody else will eventually have to repay. In the end the debt just rises.

The Smart Middle

The national debt is one of the few issues where both parties loudly blame each other while quietly working together.

One party promises benefits. The other promises tax cuts. Both send the bill to future generations.

We are told not to worry. We are told deficits do not matter. We are told growth will solve everything. We are told somebody else will figure it out later.

Later has arrived.

It does not matter whether the debt was created by social programs, tax cuts, farm subsidies, corporate giveaways, military spending, or a hundred other forms of political bribery.

Borrowing money to win elections is not leadership.

Letting our children pay for our lifestyle choices is not a family value.

Every generation has an obligation to leave the next one something better than a credit card bill.

The Smart Middle will make sure that  balanced budgets will be the norm, not the exception.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

After two centuries of a two-party system, America has the most expensive health-care system in the developed world and some of the most disappointing outcomes. They promise more spending, more programs, and more bureaucracy for the government sponsored health care we do have. And somehow the bill keeps growing while the results do not.

The Far Right

After two centuries of a two-party system, America has the most expensive health-care system in the developed world and some of the most disappointing outcomes. They promise market solutions, repeal plans, and competition. Yet costs continue to rise while ordinary families struggle to afford care. Have a preexisting condition? Just die.

The Smart Middle

The biggest lie in American health care is that we must choose between “socialized medicine” and private medicine.

We already have both.

If you are over sixty-five, the government pays your medical bills. If you are uninsured and show up at an emergency room they will treat you. Once all your money is gone, the public eventually pays there too. It is just a very expensive system.

Meanwhile, the people making the rules do not  live under the system they create.

Our first reform is simple.

Members of Congress should receive the same health-care package as the average American citizen.

No special plans. No special protections. No separate reality.

The fastest way to improve American health care is to make politicians live under it.

If the system is good enough for the rest of us, it should be good enough for them.

The current system is mostly palliative care. We need preventive and corrective care!

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Housing costs continue to rise, homelessness, or as they say ”People down on their luck” continues to grow, and yet the answer is always the same: more spending, more programs, more permits, and more bureaucracy. The coastal states have spent staggering sums and still cannot solve the problem.

The Far Right

Build anything, anywhere, and let the market sort it out. Environmental costs, infrastructure costs, and long-term consequences can be somebody else’s problem. If people cannot afford housing, they are told to work harder and pull harder on their bootstraps. The first time they support building low income housing in a wealthy neighborhood, we will believe they are truly against regulation.

The Smart Middle

America does not have a housing shortage because builders forgot how to build.

We have a housing shortage because we have made housing too complicated, too expensive, and too difficult to build. Cost-benefits analysis will be demanded for each new and many existing rules. Show us how this has helped or it will be removed.

Building codes must be simplified. Permitting must be faster. Regulations should focus on real safety rather than endless paperwork and escalating costs.

We should encourage smaller, more efficient homes. Not everyone needs a 3,000-square-foot house. Tax incentives should favor affordable homes, factory-built homes, small and energy-efficient homes that ordinary families can actually afford.

Corporate America will not be allowed to use housing as a speculative asset.

Foreign investors will not be allowed to buy large amounts of American housing they do not use at least two months a year, while American families struggle to buy their first home. Large corporations should not be allowed to accumulate vast portions of the housing stock and turn homeowners into a permanent rental subspecies.

Housing should first serve people who want to live in a community—not investors looking to extract wealth from it.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

They talk endlessly about wellness, sustainability, and healthy living. Yet Americans continue to become heavier, sicker, and more dependent on medication. Good intentions are not a substitute for results.

The Far Right

They claim to support personal responsibility while defending every corporation with a lobbyist and a campaign contribution. They happily pit your four year old against corporate America’s finest with eyelevel products in your grocery store. If a product makes money, someone in Washington is ready to protect it.

The Smart Middle

Americans spend more on health care than any other country on Earth, yet we continue to grow sicker.

Something is clearly wrong.

The power of big pharma and the layers of distribution has to be broken. We support drug prices to be set by the government just like the rest of the world.

Consumers of health care have to be told of the costs of the care upfront.

Nutrition should be one of the foundations of public health, yet generations of Americans, including physicians, have been taught more about medications and surgery than about the food they eat every day.

We support greater transparency in food production, strong research into nutrition, and the removal of medical studies that are controlled by the industries that profit from the results.

Ultra-processed foods impose enormous costs on society while healthier foods often remain more expensive and less accessible.

The system is backwards.

We should encourage healthy food production, support independent scientific research, and learn from countries that achieve better health outcomes than we do.

Foods need to be labeled by level of processing.

The goal is not to control what people eat.

The goal is to make it easier to be healthy than sick.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Every problem has one solution: Force people to comply.

Ban this. Mandate that. Tax the other thing.

The people writing the rules rarely seem concerned with how much those rules cost the people who have to live under them. A handful of endangered insects can stop housing for thousands of families. Hundreds of billions can be borrowed and spent with little concern for who eventually pays the bill.

Good intentions do not eliminate consequences.

The Far Right

Everything on earth has only one purpose: To serve human needs or fancy. Climate change is a hoax. Drill, baby, drill. Clean coal is not  an oxymoron apparently. Reality, however, remains stubborn.

The same politicians who mock renewable energy are often happy to collect the jobs, tax revenue, and profits that renewable energy projects bring to their states.

Wind power by state: Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas. Get it?

Solar power by state: California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina. Get it?

The Smart Middle

Climate change is not a hoax.

Pretending otherwise makes a mockery of science.  Finding some mistakes in climate science does not change that fact. At the same time, environmental policy that ignores ordinary people is doomed to fail.

You cannot save the planet by making life unaffordable.

The Smart Middle believes environmental reviews need to be faster, cheaper, and more focused on actual environmental impacts rather than endless bureaucracy.

Alternative energy should be promoted not just because of climate change, but because energy independence is a national security issue. America should not become dependent on China for the technologies that will power the future.

For more than a century, government helped build the markets for oil, gas, and coal. We should not suddenly discover an objection to public investment when it comes to cleaner energy just because the people that got rich from it want to hang on.

But forcing drivers in Montana to buy a vehicle he/she cannot afford or use in the vast territory is not environmentalism.

It is political theater.

The goal is not to win arguments.

The goal is to leave our children a country that is both prosperous and livable while being a good steward of the environment.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Unions can do no wrong. More unions, bigger unions, stronger unions. If a union demands it, politicians should probably approve it. Questioning union leadership is often treated as a form of betrayal.

The Far Right

Unions are portrayed as a destructive force that stand in the way of progress. Yet politicians happily campaign in union halls, pose for photographs with workers, and then weaken organized labor the moment they gain power.

Principles are often negotiable. Donations are not.

The Smart Middle

Unions are neither heroes nor villains.

They are power.

Like any concentration of power, they can be used wisely or abused.

America would be a worse place without the labor movement. Unions helped build the middle class, improve workplace safety, and gave ordinary workers leverage against large employers.

But no institution should be beyond criticism.

When a transit system carries fewer passengers than it did years ago but somehow employs more people than ever, and pays a janitor almost $300,000.- per year something is wrong. When compensation is allowed to be disconnected from performance, something is wrong. When taxpayers are treated as an unlimited source of money, something is wrong.

The lesson is simple: power without accountability eventually leads to abuse.

We support unions that negotiate in good faith for workers.

We oppose union practices that reward failure, protect incompetence, or place institutional interests above the public interest.

Public-sector compensation should be transparent. Pension stuffing needs to end. Performance matters.

Workers deserved a voice.

Taxpayers deserve one too.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

For years they insisted there was no real problem. Millions of people crossed the border, public confidence collapsed, and anyone who complained was accused of cruelty, xenophobia, or worse.

Good intentions do not secure a border or protect American workers.

The Far Right

Every immigration problem can apparently be solved with walls, raids, outrage, and campaign slogans all the while blocking immigration reform over and over again.

The same politicians who denounce immigrants in public somehow become remarkably flexible when businesses need workers, crops need harvesting, or donors need labor. Never mind how conservative the state is.

Principles are important. So is cheap labor.

The Smart Middle

A nation that cannot control its border will stop being one. The border must be secured. That is not racism. It is not nationalism. It is not extremism. It is one of the basic responsibilities of a functioning government.

This is one area where the right correctly identified a problem long before many on the left were willing to admit it existed.

But border security alone is not a solution. America also needs the largest immigration reform effort in generations.

Millions of people are already here. Many work, pay taxes, raise families, and contribute to their communities. Pretending they will all disappear is fantasy.

Pretending that some magic people will pay into Social Security with our plummeting birth rates is a fantasy too.

Secure the border. Be it with a wall.

Then create a path to legal status for productive, law-abiding residents while removing criminals and repeat offenders.

Expand time-limited work visas to 5-10 years where labor is genuinely needed.

We need them as much as they need us.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Every criminal has a story. Every theft has a good reason. Every social problem becomes a reason to lower expectations. Defund the police.

Eventually people stop listening.

Most Americans can feel compassion and still want safe streets.

The Far Right

Every problem can be solved with harsher punishments, longer sentences, and more prisons unless you storm the US capitol. Street crime becomes an obsession while white-collar crime is treated as an unfortunate misunderstanding. A black teenager with a gun is a menace to society. A billionaire stealing pensions somehow deserves another chance. Big Pharma kills hundreds of thousands of Americans with opioids and then gets a fine well below the profits they reaped.

Justice should not depend on the size of your bank account or how many “fixers” you bribed.

The Smart Middle

The first responsibility of government is public safety.

People deserve safe neighborhoods, functioning public spaces, and confidence that laws will actually be enforced.

The Smart Middle supports law enforcement and recognizes that the overwhelming majority of police officers are decent people doing a difficult and often dangerous job.

We also believe that power requires accountability.

Police officers carry the authority of the state. They therefore have a higher obligation to act professionally, use restraint, and de-escalate whenever possible.

Citizens have responsibilities too. Lawful orders should be followed. Disputes should be settled in courtrooms, not street confrontations.

Two things can be true at the same time. George Floyd was not acting responsibly and did not deserve to die. Derek Chauvin deserved to be convicted.

Crime should be punished. Abuse of power should be punished. The person who steals your life savings should not be treated more gently than the person who steals your wallet.

The Smart Middle believes justice should be blind, proportional, and applied equally whether the offender wears a ski mask, a business suit, or a badge.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

What began as an effort to address real injustice gradually became something else: mandatory trainings, ideological litmus tests, speech codes, and a growing expectation that people should be judged primarily by the groups to which they belong, in ever smaller segments.

Forced quotas.

The violence bestowed on opposition has been  more akin to an authoritarian state like China or Russia than the principles this country was founded on. DEI’s catastrophic failure has hurt the people they were trying to protect.

If your ideas are so strong, why must disagreement be treated as misconduct?

The Far Right

America’s history of discrimination, exclusion, and injustice is very real. Pretending otherwise does not make it disappear.

Too often the response has been denial, censorship, and outrage. Difficult history is removed from classrooms, uncomfortable facts become political threats, and anyone discussing inequality is accused of hating America.

Patriotism does not require amnesia. It’s the opposite.

The Smart Middle

Historical injustices have consequences, yes, to this very day.

The wealth, opportunities, and institutions built over generations did not appear out of thin air.

The land was taken from the indigenous population and much of it was worked by slaves for hundreds of years. The hard work of many, of the mostly European, settlers does not make the above statement invalid.

And the answer to past discrimination is not present discrimination.

A society that claims to value equality cannot sort people into permanent categories of privilege and grievance.

Every person deserves equal dignity and equal opportunity under the law.

That includes racial minorities, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and even white men and boys.

All of us.

The Smart Middle rejects both forced conformity and manufactured outrage.

People should be free to express their views, disagree respectfully, and live their lives without fear of ideological punishment.

On questions of gender, we believe humans should be free to define themselves as they wish. Use any pronouns you wish and give people a choice in using them.

Transgender athletes competing in sports where the transition gives them a competitive advantage, on the other hand, is lunacy.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Abortion is often presented as a simple matter of personal choice. Any discussion of moral responsibility, fetal development, or the value of unborn life is treated as an attack on women’s freedom.

Men do not matter.

The result is a debate about rights without mentioning responsibilities.

The Far Right

Every pregnancy must be carried to term, regardless of circumstance. The suffering of the mother becomes secondary to ideology. Rape, incest, medical complications, and impossible situations are subordinate to dogma. .

The result is a debate about responsibilities but without any compassion for the mother or the role of the father.

The Smart Middle

Abortion is not a simple issue. There are three lives involved.

Anyone who claims otherwise is selling a slogan.

The government has no more right to strap a woman to a gurney and force an abortion as it has the right to forbid it.

The government should also be reluctant to treat developing human life as having no value at all.

We support broad access to contraception, education, and family planning so that fewer unwanted pregnancies occur in the first place.

We believe fathers must be named and should have legal and financial responsibilities from the beginning of a pregnancy, not only after a child is born.

We support policies that encourage thoughtful decision-making rather than treating abortion as either a routine medical procedure after carefree sex or a criminal act.

Most importantly, we reject the cruelty of a political system that turns one of life’s most painful decisions into a fundraising strategy.

Our goal is to have fewer abortions, fewer unwanted pregnancies, and fewer families facing impossible choices without depriving any woman autonomy over her body.

That would be real progress.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Religion is often treated as something quaint, embarrassing, or dangerous. Moral questions become matters of personal preference. Freedom becomes detached from responsibility.

The Far Right

Religious conservatives spent decades warning about moral decline, only to enthusiastically align themselves with a man whose public life openly contradicts many of the values they claim to defend.

Power proved more tempting than moral principle.

Too often religion becomes less about faith and more about winning elections, controlling institutions, people and defeating political enemies.

The Smart Middle

The United States was founded by people with varied religious backgrounds, including some who had no religious belief at all. Many were fleeing political and religious oppression.

They were wise enough to understand that faith is strongest when it is freely chosen.

The Smart Middle supports Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and every other major faith tradition. We also support the right of people to believe in none of them.

Religion has an important role to play in public life.

Moral values matter. Character matters. Personal responsibility matters. Compassion matters.

Government should never become a religious institution, and religious institutions should never become political parties.

A theocracy is as bad in Iran today as it was in medieval Spain as it would be in The United States in the future.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Every boundary becomes oppression. Every criticism becomes judgment. Public exhibitionism at the Oscars is rebranded as empowerment and modesty becomes something to be mocked.

At some point liberation stops being liberating and becomes performance.

The Far Right

Sexuality is officially condemned, quietly consumed, and endlessly exploited.

The same people who warn about moral decline often excuse sexual misconduct, hypocrisy, and exploitation when it serves their political affiliates. Sex education is still controversial while children learn about sex from social media, pornography, and strangers on the internet.

Ignorance is not a policy.

The Smart Middle

Human sexuality is one of the great joys of life. It should be celebrated, respected, and freely expressed by consenting adults.

Adults should be free to love who they love, build the lives they choose, and make personal decisions without government interference.

At the same time, not every setting is appropriate for every form of self-expression.

Teachers are teachers. Judges are judges. Therapists are therapists. They should not make it about their bodies. Professionalism still matters. Most importantly, children deserve protection.

Most boys encounter pornography before they reach middle school. Most girls are exposed to relentless sexualization through social media before they are old enough to understand it.

This is not freedom.

It is neglect at best, abuse at worst.

The Smart Middle supports age-appropriate sex education, strong restrictions on children’s access to online pornography, and a culture that treats young people as vulnerable human beings rather than future consumers.

A healthy society neither fears sexuality nor worships it.

It teaches responsibility.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Military strength is often viewed as something embarrassing, dangerous, or inherently suspect. America’s failures are endlessly catalogued while its successes are forgotten. Defense spending is treated as wasteful by definition, and patriotism is often confused with nationalism.

The Far Right

Military strength becomes a form of chest-thumping. Every disagreement becomes a test of toughness. Allies are treated as freeloaders one day and then abandoned the next. The language of strength is everywhere, yet actual strategy is often nowhere to be found. They are proud of the United States acting as a narcissistic bully on the world stage in demanding Greenland all the while standing at the ready to bomb anyone taking anything at all from us.

The Smart Middle

A peaceful nation still needs a strong military.

The world remains full of dictators, terrorists, aggressors, and governments that would happily exploit American weakness if given the opportunity. Pretending otherwise is not enlightened. It is naïve.

At the same time, military strength is not measured by how many countries we invade, how many threats we make, or how loudly politicians talk on television.

Real strength is readiness.

Real strength is deterrence.

Real strength is keeping our word, so that allies can trust it, or renegotiate in good faith.

The Smart Middle supports maintaining the strongest military in the world while demanding greater accountability for how defense dollars are spent. Waste, fraud, and bureaucratic inefficiency should be treated as threats to national security in their own right.

We support investing in the technologies that will define future conflicts, including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and most of all drones.

We support the creation of another branch of the military with cuts to the other branches: Unmanned systems.

We support honoring our commitments to allies while demanding they contribute fairly to their own defense.

The defense budget should be reduced. We are paying way too much for outdated technology.

We honor all that have served in the past and present to protect this country.

We also support the creation of medals, mirroring those existing, in honoring all those people that successfully create conditions that make honoring the death and sacrifice of conflict obsolete.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

America is often portrayed as the primary villain of world history. Capitalism is blamed for nearly every social problem. Free speech is celebrated until someone says something offensive. Democracy is praised until voters choose the wrong candidate.

The result is politics that spend more time condemning the West than improving it.

The Far Right

Freedom becomes loyalty to a leader. Elections are legitimate only when they produce the desired outcome. Strongmen are admired for their strength while democratic institutions are dismissed as obstacles. The press is villainized.

The result is politics that confuses power with principle.

The Smart Middle

Democracy is frustrating. Free speech is frustrating. Free markets are frustrating.

That is because freedom itself is frustrating.

People make mistakes. Voters make bad decisions. Businesses fail. Politicians disappoint us. News organizations report  things that make us angry. Citizens express opinions we find foolish.

The alternative is worse.

The twentieth century provided a long list of governments that promised order, certainty, and control. They delivered censorship, corruption, fear, and oppression instead.

The Smart Middle believes that democracy remains the best system ever devised for the peaceful transfer of power.

We believe that free speech is worth protecting even when it makes us uncomfortable.

We believe that free markets, properly regulated and honestly enforced, have created more prosperity than any economic system in human history.

We believe that authoritarianism is dangerous whether it arrives wrapped in a revolutionary flag, a religious banner, or a nationalist slogan.

America is not perfect. Neither is democracy. Neither is capitalism. But free people retain the ability to improve all three. That is why they remain worth defending.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

MMilitary power is viewed with suspicion. American mistakes become the central story of world affairs. Too often there is an assumption that if America simply steps back, conflicts will somehow resolve themselves.

History suggests otherwise.

The Far Right

Might makes right.

Strength becomes an excuse for arrogance. Aggression is favored. Allies become burdens. Diplomacy becomes weakness. America should simply impose its will and let others deal with the consequences.

Bullies do not become leaders.

They remain bullies until someone stronger arrives.

The Smart Middle

The United States should have the strongest military in the world.

Not because we enjoy war.

Because weakness invites conflict.

At the same time, military power should be guided by discipline, restraint, and clear national interests.

America should honor its alliances. NATO matters. Democratic allies matter. Keeping our word matters.

We support continued assistance to Ukraine because allowing larger countries to simply devour smaller neighbors is an invitation to future wars.

Strength is not the same thing as recklessness.

No more forever wars.

All members of Congress have to send their nearest capable relative to any war they approve or do not stop.

No more nation-building projects with no clear objective.

No military action without congressional approval except in genuine emergencies.

No regime-change military fantasies.

No using the American military against American cities.

When America makes mistakes, we should acknowledge them. When innocent people are harmed, we should make amends. Accountability is not a weakness. It is strength.

The goal is a foreign policy that is strong enough to deter aggression, wise enough to avoid unnecessary wars, and humble enough to remember that power is not virtue.

Understanding the Debate

Left • Right • Our Approach

The Far Left

Too many have become incapable of acknowledging the humanity of Israelis.

More than a thousand civilians are murdered, kidnapped, raped, and terrorized, and the first instinct is often to explain, justify, contextualize, or celebrate.

Minimize the good about Israel and highlight its shortcomings.

The language of human rights suddenly develops exceptions.

The Far Right

Most have become, or never have been, incapable of acknowledging the humanity of Palestinians.

Tens of thousands die, entire neighborhoods disappear, children are buried under rubble, and the response is often a shrug, a slogan, or another shipment of weapons.

The language of human rights suddenly develops exceptions.

The land of Palestine is for Israelis only. All of it and more of it.

The Smart Middle

In short: The Garfield Party is Pro Israel-Pro Peace. If you want more, read on.

The tragedy of Israel and Palestine is that both peoples have legitimate fears and legitimate grievances.

The story of the Jewish people is singular in history. No other has been persecuted this often for this long. No other has ever been subjected to the scale of organized violence perpetrated by Nazi Germany and their many, and often ignored, collaborating nations.

In response, they were given the opportunity, also singular in world history, to reclaim their ancestral home they (largely) left, 1800 years earlier.

No other displaced peoples in the world will ever have that chance again.

Unfortunately the land was occupied. We accept that the inhabitants would have never left their homes voluntarily and the neighboring states were unlikely to grant Israel’s existence without war. We accept that sending 700k people into exile was necessary and some of the violence needed to give the Jews a place to call home.

We accept that the traumatised and repeatedly attacked Israelis could not see past their own pain for the first segment of their existence.

We do not accept the way much of Israel has treated the displaced Palestinians through their shared history. First ignoring them, then treating them unequal under the law and in a repetition of history as subhuman. Never mind the failures of Arafat.

We do not condone past or future acts of violence committed by Palestinians or their supporters.

The settler movement is a threat to Israeli security and against the interest of the United States in the Middle East. The Garfield party will work against them with all legal means at our disposal, all the while defending Israel from any external threats to its security. Forever.

The settlements need to stop and be reduced. Israel asks no less of the Palestinian Authorities in curbing terroism. Yes, if the Six Day War would have been lost, the far right Israelis living in tents on the Gaza Strip would bomb buses and the far right in the State of Palestine would build settlements.

We do not support collective punishment and would not supply the weapons to do so.

If the Jewish people could forgive Germany, then they can forgive the people whose land they took. Let the countries with which Israel made peace, always at a cost to themselves, be a guide.

Going Forward

For decades Americans have been told they must choose between two parties that increasingly resemble rival tribes rather than governing institutions. Every election is presented as the most important of our lifetime. Every opponent is portrayed as an existential threat. Every compromise becomes betrayal. Yet the same problems remain. The debt grows. Housing becomes less affordable. Public trust declines. Citizens become more isolated from one another. The people responsible then ask for another term and tell us the alternative is unthinkable.

Is this truly the best we can do?

The Smart Middle rejects the idea that Americans must permanently choose between competing forms of dysfunction. We believe government should be competent, institutions should serve citizens rather than parties, and public office should be a responsibility rather than a reward. We believe freedom requires responsibility, strength requires humility, and disagreement is not hatred. We believe most Americans are far less interested in ideological warfare than the people who profit from keeping the war going.

Some Laws we need:

Minimum age for any social media: 16.

No personal screens in school through high school. All screens provided by schools are limited for intended lessons.

Open primaries in all elections

Ranked choice voting in all elections.

Supreme Court reform

Tie the health insurance package of politicians to what is available to the average American.

Strengthen anti corruption laws for all politicians including the president just like President Garfield initiated, for we have come full circle.

Limit the power of pardons by the president.

Any person that reoffends after a pardon has their sentence doubled.

Make self certification of edible substances (GRAS) illegal.

A new bill of rights and responsibilities.

Dramatically simplify the tax code, close all loopholes and enforce it.

Restrict the profiting from political positions during and for 5 years after.

The salaries of members of Congress and Senate  to be 10 times of the average American, as a tool to slow corruption. They will not be allowed to buy supplemental health insurance with it.

Punish or disallow Gerrymandering.

Maximum age of any elected official to fewer than 75 years at the end of their term.

How The Strategy Works

1. Build the Movement

Recruit supporters, volunteers, and candidates across the country who believe America needs a new political voice.

2. Focus on winnable races first

Most third parties chase the presidency and lose.
We focus first on House and Senate races, where even a small number of seats can influence national decisions.

3. Expand National Influence

As the movement grows and wins seats, the Garfield Party can influence legislation and reshape the national political conversation.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Learn more about how the Garfield Party works, why our strategy is different, and how you can help build the movement.

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The Far Left and the Far Right are sheltering the same idiots.

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The Garfield Party

A new political movement focused on practical solutions and a Congress-first strategy.

The Far Left and the Far Right are housing the same idiots.

Building a new voice between the extremes.

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