Today In Both Sides Do It: The No Labels Cult

cult /kəlt/ noun
a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object...

a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister...

a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing...

About 10 minutes after the No Labels "Both Siderist" snake-oil consortium opened for business back in December 2010, I wrote...

Dead Center

Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!

Yay!

In case you ever idled away an afternoon screwing around with your old political chemistry set/fantasy football league lineups and wondering what would happen if you took a bunch of Republican primary losers (Charlie Christ)...added in a goonbag of out-of-work and out-of-favor former Republican speechwriters and campaign button-men (David Frum/John Avlon/Mark McKinnon)...the last of the politically arteriosclerotic insider DLC goofs who aren't already drawing paychecks under the Obama Administration's "Former Clinton White House Full Employment Project" (Nancy Jacobson aka. Mrs. Mark Penn)...Republican minor teevee celebrities (Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough)...

...and David Fucking Brooks?

And then sprinkled the resulting crime against nature with an assload of money (because there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities)?

...

But nothing we did not expect, right?

I mean, ever since the Republican Base ducked out on paying the tab for a generation of being loudly and catastrophically wrong about everything by putting on funny hats, screaming about liberty and calling themselves "The Tea Party", their sleazy Centrist enablers have been seething with jealously. Quite suddenly the monster they built didn't need them anymore and the skeevy hustlers who had helped create the Racist/ Corporatist/ Dominionist Confederacy on the bones of the New Deal and the grave of the American Dream found themselves cast out and looking for their next meal ticket...

And since it's inception No Labels has proven to be everything we thought it would be: the Stupidest Scam In American Politics That Will Not Die Because People Keep Giving It Lots Of Money: And every so often we check in on it to see which horribly awful thing it is saying with a straight face this time.  We can't actually do anything about it since we're a two-bit, running-on-fumes Liberal blog and like all of the villains of the plutocracy, No Labels is walled up behind a mountain of money, secret donors and claptrap  (from Yahoo News in 2014) --

...

It turns out that for a group that consistently bills itself as above the partisan politics and the corrosive culture of Washington, No Labels has come to exemplify some of the most loathed qualities of the town’s many interest groups.

Much of the group’s budget goes toward sustaining or promoting itself. According to No Labels’ confidential document, the group employed 22 paid staffers and eight consultants as of May. Of its projected $4.5 million budget for 2014, only 4 percent — or $180,000 — of spending was slotted for “Congressional Relations.” By contrast, administrative and operational expenses got $1.035 million over the same time period. Another 5 percent was set for travel. A further 30 percent ($1.35 million) was earmarked for digital growth and press, and 14 percent for fundraising.

...

“The reality is that No Labels is a front group to raise money and pay consultants,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They should release a full disclosure of not only how they’re raising their money but also how they’re spending it.”

When asked whether No Labels should disclose its donors when fighting for a less divisive political system, Jacobson said, “No — In our hyperpartisan world, the concern might well be the opposite,” suggesting that in a political atmosphere where most big donors spend money to boost one side over another, donors who choose to promote bipartisanship need greater protection.

No Labels has raised approximately $12 million since 2010, with another $4 million pledged for 2014, according to its private financial summary.

...

-- but we can at least document the atrocities.

This week's atrocity came courtesy of the business with President Obama's Supreme Court nomination, which has been as naked a display of outright Conservative sedition as I have ever seen.  Hell, even Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier -- who is so slavishly automatic in his Both Siderism that one suspects he was raised in a Skinner Box by David Broder and Ruth Marcus -- could not get it up for this one:

Objective as possible, I rarely come across a story where one side deserves 100% of blame. Congrats, GOP. You've stumped me with #SCOTUS

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) March 16, 2016

Well, damn!  That's just leaving money on the table, and nobody Hoovers up the Both Siderist loose change that Conservative atrocities leave in their wake like No Labels.  From Time magazine (emphasis added):

Jon Huntsman and Joseph Lieberman: The Republican SCOTUS Blockade Is ‘Not Acceptable’

Jon Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah, and Joseph Lieberman, a former U.S. Senator for Connecticut, are the Co-Chairs of No Labels.

‘We cannot let today’s crisis of leadership turn into a full-blown constitutional crisis'

We recently wrote that it was time for our leaders to find a compromise on the Supreme Court vacancy for the good of our country. Unfortunately, since then the two sides have only descended deeper into political rancor and partisan bickering. Millions of dollars in television ads have already flooded the airwaves in Washington and in states across the country.

Our country—and our Constitution—deserve better. And it doesn’t have to be this way.

...

And just in case that isn't clear enough, here are the same scuttlefish writing in Real Clear Politics (emphasis added)::

President Obama has said he will appoint a new justice to the bench. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the president should wait until a newly elected president takes office. Senate Republicans, and some presidential candidates, have called to block approval of the president's eventual nominee. This posturing by both sides accomplishes nothing for our country...

The rot, failure and madness of the Right is a feast for parasites of the Center.

Which leaves one group which, whatever their faults and frailties --

-- by and large doesn't fucking lie to you all day, every day on order to scare you so stupid that you will not only gladly drink poison...

...but you'll demand a second helping if the first dose doesn't kill you.