The Triumphant Return of Holy Joe Lieberman

With the passage of time, it can become easy to forget what a hollow, craven shit-heel Holy Joe Lieberman really is.  For example, here are just a few of his greatest hits from years gone by (for good measure, here is a link to a dramatic recreation of the moment when Holy Joe went out of his way to stab the Gore 2000 campaign in the back (embedding disabled on video.)

Combining the cartoonishly greasy fake piety of the lowest god bothering Elmer Gantry with the moral compass of a bus station pickpocket, Lieberman has become famous as the ambulatory embodiment the Beltway Both Siderist's Id,  So perhaps the wisest thing for Holy Joe to do at this point in his life would be to shut hell up and let those lobbying dollars he promised he would never take continue to pad out his very comfortable retirement (from Daily Kos in 2013):

Joe 'I'm not going to become a lobbyist' Lieberman becomes a lobbyist

But for the former leader and sole candidate of the "Connecticut for Lieberman" party, there is no sound quite so sweet as the sound of his own voice sermonizing about other people's moral failings, and so every few months he finds an excuse to open his prayer-hole and remind everyone why they hate him so very much.

This time (presumably thanks to very poor staff work) Holy Joe opened up to  Isaac Chotiner at Slate, who takes the old fraud for an unexpected ride behind fading facade of the No Labels Potemkin political scam which Lieberman co-chairs.

You just said that you thought Trump could be a deal-maker. You said you want to keep your No Label hat on. Doesn’t it just seem like we’re at a moment where a bigoted and demagogic figure has emerged on the American political scene and that perhaps this is the time for No Labels to unite around the fact that this guy is a scary figure?

I got you. Here’s what I meant by keeping my No Label hat on. I’m being interviewed by you as the co-chair of No Labels. No Labels is a movement that has a purpose, which is to try to incentivize the two parties to begin to work together, compromise, and finally get something done and deal with the country’s problems before they become crises or catastrophes. There’s a separate question, and this is what I meant, about Joe Lieberman, Democrat, former senator, about what I’m going to do now. If you ask me personally, do I agree with the positions that Donald Trump has taken on a number of really important issues such as immigration, such as his comments on the judge …

Allowing Muslims in the country.

Yeah. I’d like to actually disagree with that. I like the articulation that Paul Ryan gave that there should be a security test, not a religious test. It should apply to everybody of any religion coming in. Right? But that’s me. That’s not No Labels. No Labels is ...

Huntsman endorsed though, that’s why I asked.

I don’t feel under any time pressure. We’ve got five months until the election.

Endorsements aside, I think a lot of people right now are freaked out about Trump. I’m just wondering whether you feel like a group like No Labels at this time loses some of its force because Trump himself is such a sui generis figure.

Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. He’s a very different case. It has sort of affected the No Labels purpose, but the No Labels purpose is unique and has value on its own. This is why we’re all focused on this 1787 conference we’re going to do in December, which we’re billing really as how do we begin to make peace now that the war is over.

You don’t seem terrified by the prospect that this guy could be president.

Well, I mean [laughs]. Here’s what I’m going to say today. I’m again trying to ... I understand the difficulty not only for me but for you in separating between Joe Lieberman individual and Lieberman co-chair of No Labels. I think the purpose of No Labels is so important that I am focused on it now.
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Speaking only for myself, I have no trouble separating "Joe Lieberman individual and Lieberman co-chair of No Labels".

I loathe them both equally.

As I have been writing on this blog since the week of their grand opening back in 2010, No Labels has never been anything more that a vanity project and scam designed to separate rich, establishment shut-ins from their money.

And I am sorta delighted that -- if only for a moment -- the rise of Donald Trump has thrown the essentially ridiculous nature of the No Labels scam into such stark relief.

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)?

What you get crawling out of the Petri dish are things like the autotuned, content-free, sugar-coma-inducing horror that is

the "No Labels Anthem"

But nothing we did not expect, right?
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