Free Enterprise Party (Sober Thought)

The Free Enterprise Party of Sober Thought is a small tent ideological party supporting unfettered capitalism. It draws members and voters from large industrialists, free traders, economic liberals, social darwinists, anti-unionists, limited government adherents, libertarians, anti-communists and other secular conservatives.

It believes in small, devolved government -- and even then only when it does not interfere with unbridled entrepreneurialism. Thus, it is quite materialistic and would freely exchange its politically neutral positions on religion, racial and ethnic diversity, sexual orientation, civil rights, etc., so long as it did not interfere with one's ability to rake in the Denkmarks.

The party is rarely in government even though it seems an ideal coalition partner candidate with the largest showing among the small parties and an astonishing ability to compromise outside its core pro-business beliefs. Were religion to decline in importance as a political cleavage, the party could even climb into the top three parties if it simultaneously made great gains at the expense of the big tent Conservative Party, the small tent Rural Alliance and the even smaller tent Christian Unity Party.

The real problem to finding coalitions to join is caused by monomania: Free Traders are willing to compromise on anything, except the principles that set them apart from and make them objectionable to all other parties. Its relations with the two parties with which it could even theoretically forge links is instructive: the Conservatives see them as a rising power threatening to replace the former as the leading right wing party, while the Alliance sees them as a threat to the former remaining as the Conservatives' most loyal junior coalition partner. So the likely outcome of an upsurge in FEP MHFs would be the exclusion -- not the increase -- of the right wing from government.

However, being a one-note party has certain advantages as well. Internal party cohesion is easy to maintain since there is effectively only one litmus test for all policy decisions. Radical economic and social measures can be proposed without fear that they will actually have to execute them. And even those extreme policies which seem to have a kernel of truth to them, when moderated and implemented by the big tent parties actually in government, can be retroactively claimed as legislative successes.