The Lincoln Lads Continue Playing Catch-Up

Because I am low and perverse is never fails to amuse me when I find that the Mightiest Brains in Professional Political Thinkology are finally, grudgingly beginning to "discover" some territory that we po', dumb, Liberal rubes occupied decades ago.

And I do mean decades.

Our story today nominally about No Labels, which was one of the earliest and most profitable bespoke moderate/Centrist/Both Siderist scams, which summoned itself into existence from the masturbatory fantasies of goof like David Fucking Brooks on December 13, 2010.

I call that date to your attention because it was just two days after No Labels was chartered, on December 15, 2010, you're humble scrivener was hard at work publishing an essay entitled "Dead Center" and subtitled:

Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!

I'll hum a few bars, and you see if it sounds familiar:

...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?

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.

Preferably a meal ticket under a banner that -- like "Tea Party -- wouldn't keep bringing up their horribly inconvenient past as the sleazy, enabling hustlers.

Hey, kids! I have an idea! Lets peel those the icky, damning labels off of everything and -- presto! -- there is magically no longer any difference between rat poison and apple sauce!

Can I haz my million dollars now?...

I went on like that at some length because that's how I roll, and having re-read it, I wouldn't retract a word of it.  I've written about No Labels dozens of times since, as well most of the other Country First/Party Over Country/Purple Project scams launched by Republicans who have been run out of the party and who felt the sudden need to launch a "movement" which looks like every other such "movement", right down to the buzzwords they use and the financial pitches they make.

And now, +11 years too late, you'll never guess who just discovered the authoritarian-enabling knavery of Centrism and it's nest of well-funded handmaidens over at No Labels.

Lincoln Project Co-Founder Reed Galen:  Alright guys, I want to turn to… if we’ve gone from one side of the American political spectrum which is dark and scary I want to go now to the land of fairy tales and unicorns.  And that is the American Centrist.  You know I think you guys have heard… like, I spent two or three years in this sort of “independent/reform” space before we started the Lincoln Project. 

driftglass:  Of course you did.  Because the High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It has always been a safe space where smug Beltway pundits and Republican operatives could hide out whenever the sound of GOP atrocities got too loud to ignore.  

Galen: And in all that time, “Centrism”, “Moderation” all the stuff – these were key words.  And I think there was a group out there who did a survey and when they got [it] back they were shocked because 2 percent of the respondents considered themselves Centrists.  No one's a goddamn Centrist.   

driftglass:  Wow!  Really?  Please, do go on and tell me more about this "Centrism" thingie. 

Galen: But today as we're recording this there's a group out there called No Labels which has raised gobs and gobs of money to protect and promote moderate Republicans and Democrats in the US House in the US Senate.   

driftglass:  No Labels, eh?  Golly, that's sure catchy name.  Is there any further information about them?

Galen: That in and of itself…not a bad thing.  All six of them are left.  This morning though, Rick [Lincoln Project Co-Founder Rick Wilson] they crossed some weird line and I'm not sure why they did it.

driftglass:  I am.  I can tell you exactly why they did it.  You should definitely ask me.  

Galen:  But in a PDF they put out that was going through some survey results…

Wilson:  Of why they oppose the Voting Rights bills.

Galen  . of why they oppose the Voting Rights bills.  Of why they  believe that Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema deserve all of our support.  They said that Joe Biden's pro-democracy speech in Atlanta last week was as incendiary and free of truth as any speech of Donald Trump…

driftglass:  No one who has seen the way No Labels has debased itself over and over again to stay true to its fetish for false equivalence should be in any way surprised or blown away by this revelation.

Wilson:  Of Trump's Big Lie.  Which blew me away...

driftglass:  Heh.  Moron.

Wilson: Because, look, Joe Biden gave a speech about voting rights where he called down some fire on people who are trying to turn back the clock. And if No Labels or other groups like them can't understand the importance of the long, arc-bending journey of civil rights and voting rights in this country…and just what it means…then they shouldn't be in public life.  

driftglass:  I have some bad news for you kid. 

Wilson:   But if they believe that that speech by Joe Biden was in any way equivalent to Donald Trump seeking to overthrow a legitimate and free and fair election in 2020 and then ordering people as part of a broad conspiracy to try to overthrow the government both through legal means and through an invasion of the US Capitol…  I mean, this is why, Reed,  I wake up almost every day and go, “Thank God I don't live in Washington.  Thank God I’m not in that God damn hell hole.”  It’s like that  South Park episode where they’re smelling their own farts.   That idea they're going to hold this, like, we're going to be “Both Sides”  right up the middle.  The proverbial line about the middle is a  yellow line with roadkill on it.

Galen:  So [Lincoln Project Senior Advisor Trygve Olson] you and I have talked about even this on this show.  Understanding the fight you’re in.  They're ignorant or intentionally misunderstanding and misallocating, like, where we are in the world.  In American politics today.  That somehow this is all normal. That if we just all got along that everything would be fine.  That there is an equivalency between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, and what we need is unity.  Like, we all believe in unity.  We'd all rather have unity and compromise.  That's not where we are…

Then they beat up on Dick Durbin a little for hedging about Biden's speech, which Durbin deserved.

Galen:  So there's the No Labels crew but they hang out with like the mainstream media crew.

driftglass:  You mean the Centrist grifters and the mainstream media rub each other's rhubarb?  Shocking!  If you could see me now, you'd see I'm wearing my "shocked" face. 

Galen:  ...it's like the almost seven years of Donald Trump didn't exist.  

driftglass:  Here's a funny thing about that. It reminds those of us who dare to remember the Before Time how, for all of these same goofs, the Right's eight-year racist primal scream during the Obama years ceased to exist once Trump was elected.  And the Dubya years and their myriad lies, corruptions, catastrophes and betrayals of the constitution disappeared after Obama was elected,  And all memory of the Clinton era just up and vanished the minute Dubya was handed the White House by five conservative judges.  In fact, Galen, I wrote a long thing about it back in 2009 entitled Like a Virgin which I'm guessing you Heroes of Democracy also never read.  

Galen:  And somehow now, because Donald Trump is Republican and then Joe Biden's a Democrat they're equivalent.  And the things they saying to her equivalent, when they're not.  But you know to your point Rick about like the crucible of the Beltway, like, not allowing y'know any common sense to get through like it... they're not the same thing and yet this is where we are. 

Wilson:  That, to me, the most puzzling element of this in some ways.  

driftglass:  Really?   Because I’m just some Midwest Libtard with a wee podcast and a tiny blog, and it is perfectly obvious to me why the national media does what it does.  Weird how this is all strange and new and inexplicable to life-long political professional who were paid for their ability to influence the public and who have deep contacts inside the Beltway media.  But please, do go on...

Wilson: Our national media, they are not stupid people, as a rule.   But there is a cultural bias to say, y’know the process of D.C. is the story, not the intent.  And so this idea that they have to be like, “We have to be just as tough on Biden and because now he's president” as opposed to people who are literally trying to end this Republic.  Who are trying to end our system of government in this country.  It's one of those things where, y’know, William Shirer wrote a lot about his time in Nazi Germany before the war and no one thinks it's going to come for them.  Everyone thinks it's just politics as usual,  No big deal.  No big deal.  We're going to move on.  It’s a small thing.  It's not a crisis.  And unfortunately the press in D.C. thinks, “Okay this is just going to be another political year.  Nothing will change.  It's just the same old R and D fight just with a little more color.” But it's not.  It is 100% not the same fight as business as usual...

They went on like that at length.

And then, this...

Galen:  And listen, I mean, Rick, that's the one thing... I think people just, y'know, think this is just, like, PR when we say this, but we will work with anyone who's on the side of pro-democracy.  

Well, almost anyone, right?

Right?

So don't come 'round here trying to teach grandpa how to debug media code.  Grandpa was reading Both Siderist core dumps and debugging media COBOL back when you were sucking on Lee Atwater's teat.

Instead I strongly advise you to go have words with your own, Never Trump running buddies who have cracked open a whole jug of Centrist popskull --

Will Saletan's "I Am Centrism!" Pays Off Bigly

-- and appear determined to drink it right down to the lees. 

No Half Measures