Moderate

Centrists have maintained a consistent commitment to fiscal responsibility, criticizing deficit spending from both parties. When Republicans cut taxes without offsetting spending reductions, centrists object. When Democrats propose new spending programs without clear funding mechanisms, centrists push back. Organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and centrist groups like No Labels have maintained this consistency through multiple administrations, earning criticism from both sides for refusing to accept their preferred fiscal narratives.

Centrists consistently defend democratic norms and institutional integrity even when doing so disadvantages their preferred outcomes. They support fair redistricting whether it helps Republicans or Democrats, defend the independence of the judiciary regardless of who appointed the judges, and oppose norm-breaking behavior from both parties. This commitment to process over outcome is a defining centrist characteristic that differentiates them from partisans who defend institutions only when those institutions produce their preferred results.

Centrists consistently defer to empirical evidence when evaluating policies, even when the evidence challenges their initial assumptions. This leads to positions that defy easy ideological categorization: a centrist might support gun background checks (supported by public health evidence), free trade (supported by economic evidence), nuclear energy (supported by climate science), and merit-based immigration (supported by labor economics). This evidence-first approach is the closest thing centrists have to an ideological principle.

Centrist legislators have consistently built bipartisan coalitions to pass significant legislation. The infrastructure bill of 2021, various defense authorization acts, and criminal justice reform measures all passed with centrist coalition-building. While ideological purists on both sides criticize these compromises as inadequate, centrists argue that imperfect legislation that passes is better than perfect legislation that dies in partisan gridlock. The Senate Problem Solvers Caucus and similar groups institutionalize this approach.

Centrists consistently oppose demagoguery regardless of its ideological direction. They criticize right-wing populism that scapegoats immigrants and undermines democratic institutions with equal vigor as they criticize left-wing populism that demonizes the wealthy and promotes cancel culture. This even-handed rejection of extremism sometimes earns centrists the accusation of "both-sides-ism," but they argue that maintaining this balance is essential to preserving the democratic center and preventing the politics of resentment from consuming governance.