RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment
Print

Pierce writes: "Every now and again, we check in on No Labels, the mock-Centrist collection of political pickpockets whose primary purpose in our politics is to drop 'bipartisan' camouflage netting over Republican policies so as to divorce said policies."

Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., listens during the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing in Washington. (photo: Bill Clark/Getty Images)
Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., listens during the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing in Washington. (photo: Bill Clark/Getty Images)


Wolves in Creep's Clothing

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

31 October 14

 

very now and again, we check in on No Labels, the mock-Centrist collection of political pickpockets whose primary purpose in our politics is to drop "bipartisan" camouflage netting over Republican policies so as to divorce said policies, which suck gallons of pond water on their own, from the flying monkey escadrille that makes up the rest of the Republican party. Many people are attached to this long con, most of whom are fairly dingy characters, low-rent magicians from a flea-bitten political burlesque parlor. Morning Squint is deeply attached to them, as is Jon (Third Place) Huntsman, who needed a gig after the Republican primary electorate stopped laughing at him. It's the brainchild of Mark McKinnon, a Texas grifter and a former acolyte of C-Plus Augustus in the latter's rise to power. Having enabled a catastrophic presidency in such a way that he should be kept out of political life for the same reasons we keep toddlers out of the hand grenades, McKinnon's made a sudden retreat into bipartisan "problem-solving," perhaps the least-convincing transformation since Vladimir Putin abandoned the KGB for elective office.

Anyway, there's this really tough U.S. Senate election out in Colorado. Incumbent Democratic senator Mark Udall -- son of Mo, of sainted memory -- is life-and-death with a fetus-fondling grab-bag of pure crazy named Cory Gardner, who's as far into the izonkosphere as Joni Ernst, but who doesn't have a second career of castrating hogs on which to fall back. In his career in the House of Representatives, Gardner supported that personhood amendment, and he fought to change the definition of "rape" to "forcible rape," a far-from-merely-semantic distinction that put Gardner in the same boat with Todd Akin as they rowed steadily away from the shores of sanity. He's a climate change denialist, a Steve King ally on immigration, and so anti-gay that Rick Santorum thinks he's just peachy, and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is? Gardner has managed to soft-pedal his extremism to the point where he just might win, largely because the political press is willing to purchase all manner of swampland at a very reasonable cost. NPR's Mara Liasson turns out to have been the latest, and most predictable, mark.

So you'll probably never guess who looked at Cory Gardner and saw, not a career extremist with a gift for rancid opportunism, but a man who can bring the nation together behind a National Strategic Agenda to Solve Our Problems the way President Jon Huntsman has over the past two years? I'm telling you, you'll never guess.

Dammit, how'd you guess? You guys are really smart.

No Labels' move to more aggressively back the Colorado Republican seems uncharacteristic, however, especially since controversy involving Gardner already consumed the nonpartisan group earlier this year. No Labels endorsed Gardner in April, angering Senate Democrats. The backlash led the organization to clarify that any candidate could earn its endorsement -- including Udall. The No Labels Seal of Approval is awarded to members of the Problem Solvers Caucus who have worked across the political aisle and support a national strategic agenda of shared goals for the country," said Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to George W. Bush and a No Labels co-founder. "We are happy to award the Seal to people running in the same race."

"Uncharacteristic," my arse. This is entirely in keeping with the organization's real agenda, which is to Bring The Nation Together behind the Republican platform of 2000, before the nation went entirely to the dogs by electing the guy who ran on it. And, of course, a deep concern for "civility" is one of the important elements of the con. Udall has been inconveniently pointing out, over and over again, the fact that Gardner is perfectly willing to pitch the privacy rights of 51 percent of the population overboard, and that Gardner's doing his damndest to conceal that fact. (This sent the editorial board of the Denver Post to the fainting couch, from which it produces the single dumbest editorial endorsement in American political history.) Alleged Democratic senator Joe Manchin (D-Anthracite), who is a co-chair of this passel of political bunco artists, at least has had the decency to stand by Udall. Of course, in this case, as in so many others, we defer further comment on Manchin's decision to Mr. Rock of Brooklyn.

No Labels' decision to get behind Gardner should be the final straw for anyone to the left of the Green Room of MSNBC. Gardner is not a reasonable man. He is a fanatic. He wants to solve problems, all right. One of the problems he wants to solve is a woman's reproductive autonomy. Another problem he wants to solve is the country's pale effort to deal with the greatest environmental crisis of our time, which he does not believe really exists.The decision by No Labels is of a piece with that dog's breakfast of a column that David Brooks dropped on us the other day about "partyism," a word Brooks invented because it rhymes with "racism" and "sexism" and therefore sounds spookier than "partisanism," which is what politics are supposed to be about. Every time the country starts to notice the effects of the prion disease that has been afflicting the Republicans since it first ate the monkey brains back in the 1980's, and every time the Democratic party seeks to make a political point that the Republicans thereby have been driven mad, we get paragraphs like this from Brooks.

This mentality also ruins human interaction. There is a tremendous variety of human beings within each political party. To judge human beings on political labels is to deny and ignore what is most important about them. It is to profoundly devalue them. That is the core sin of prejudice, whether it is racism or partyism.

So, apparently, pointing out the positions that the likes of Cory Gardner have held for their entire political lives, until they decided they wanted a better gig, is roughly the same "core sin" that was present in American society under Jim Crow?

Yeah, right.

No Labels loved that column, by the way.

Even if it were honest, which No Labels now has demonstrated conclusively is beyond its poor abilities, the search for the Golden Mean remains largely a unicorn hunt because the true cause of our political dysfunction is deliberately misdiagnosed, time and time again. One of the two political parties that we allow ourselves has gone stark raving mad, largely through the efforts of the likes of Cory Gardner. Mr. Yeats lowballed it. Not only can the center not hold, it can't even be the center.

e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN