The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Fierce Fury of the Angry Mob of Impassioned Bipartisan Moderates

Posted on | December 14, 2010 | 30 Comments

Few things are more predictable than this: Whenever Republicans are on the upswing — whenever conservatives are on fire with enthusiasm, proclaiming their core principles and clearly on the winning side of important issues — the mainstream media will devote enormous coverage to an alleged groundswell of discontented moderates whose demands for “bipartisanship” and “civility” are accompanied by condemnation of “divisiveness” and complaints that “extremists” are ignoring the vast majority of independent “centrist” voters.

Let the reader note that we never heard any such complaints about “divisiveness” and “extremism” after Obama was elected and Democrats were ramming their partisan agenda through Congress.

If you’ve been paying attention to politics for the past 20 or 30 years, this kind of stuff is as predictable as critical acclaim for a ballet movie with lesbian themes. (The Black Swan is this year’s Brokeback Mountain, and lesbian ballerinas, like gay cowboys, exist mainly in the imaginations of screenwriters seeking the kind of épater les bourgeois symbolism that makes Oscar voters feel good about rewarding “art.” But I digress . . .)

All of this is to explain what notorious candy-ass Allahpundit calls the RINO/DINO Alliance, an alleged “movement” with a manifesto co-authored by David Frum:

On Dec. 13, more than 1,000 citizens from the 50 states will convene in New York to change the odds. They are founding a movement – No Labels. Among them will be Democrats, Republicans and independents who are proud of their political affiliations and have no intention of abandoning them. A single concern brings them together: the hyper-polarization of our politics that thwarts an adult conversation about our common future. A single goal unites them: to expand the space within which citizens and elected officials can conduct that conversation without fear of social or political retribution.

The purpose of No Labels, of course, is to give the most irredeemably stupid “independent” voters an excuse to keep voting for Democrats. The mere fact that “No Labels” gets an 808-word free advertisement on the op-ed page of the Washington Post should tell you all you need to know about this alleged movement: It’s a ginned-up Establishment scam with no real activist constituency. Erick Erickson summarizes yesterday’s No Label summit:

Only in a place like New York, where a man can set off a bomb in Times Square and have the mayor blame opponents of Obamacare, could an unserious circle of smug, self-righteous political exiles get together and demand that they be treated seriously — so long as we give them no labels.

All you need to do to understand what No Labels is about is to look at the list of speakers for yesterday’s big coming-out party. An organization whose manifesto was co-authored by David Frum, and which manages to get both David Brooks and David Gergen at its inaugural event — well, suffice it to say this probably isn’t the kind of “Army of Davids” Professor Reynolds had in mind.

This isn’t a “movement.” That would require not only an identifiable activist constituency but also some clear sense of where it is they intend to “move.”

No, this is inertia. This is status quo-ism, a panic reaction to a populist insurgency, a desperate bid for relevance by an establishmentarian elite flying a false flag of bipartisanship, since their bogus “movement” is actually bipartisan in name only:

[T]he only Republicans present at Columbia University’s modern, square Alfred Lerner Hall seemed to be those who had recently lost primary races, such as South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis and Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, or former Republicans like Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No other senior elected Republican officials were in attendance, though a range of Democrats were present, some of them seeming a bit mystified by the bipartisan cast of the event . . .

All of which is to say that this is an outright scam, and the only question you really need to ask about this kind of political hustle is: Cui bono?

Who benefits here? What’s the bottom line? Where’s the payoff, who’s paying and who’s getting paid? Before we identify the sow, let’s see which piglets are sucking the teats:

It’s something of an odd conceit, given the decentralized way powerful grass-roots movements generally come together these days. After all, MoveOn.org and the Tea Party groups sprang up organically and in a decentralized way, embraced by angry citizens circulating online petitions and holding rallies.
By contrast, No Labels was created by two Washington consultants, the Democratic fund-raiser Nancy Jacobson and the Republican image-shaper Mark McKinnon, and its slick opening event featured throngs of journalists, free boxed lunches and a song written for the occasion by the pop sensation Akon.

Ding! Ding! Ding! This scam is funded by Democratic money and scripted by the man whose name is a synonym for everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party. 

So this No Labels operation is a stealth-Democrat ripoff perpetrated with the help of two-faced RINO backstabbers. Now let’s see who’s paying the bills for this lavish exercise in bogus bipartisanship:

No Labels, the new centrist pro-“common sense” advocacy group that launched at a high-profile New York conference today, will not be revealing to the public who is putting up the money for the effort. . . .
No Labels, the new centrist pro-“common sense” advocacy group that launched at a high-profile New York conference today, will not be revealing to the public who is putting up the money for the effort. . . .
Transparency . . . is not a part of the No Labels vision.

Yeah. Funny how that works out.

But speaking of “transparency,” it’s now less than two weeks before Christmas, and I am transparently in need of cash to buy gifts for my wife and six children, so reader contributions to the tip jar would be extremely welcome.

Those phony “moderate” rat-bastards would never give a dime to a right-winger like me. Because they hate children and Christmas, too.

Merry Christmas, and hit the freaking tip jar!

UPDATE: Welcome, Gateway Pundit readers!

UPDATE II: Linked by Da Tech Guy, by Nice Deb (who sees “No Labels” as the “Coffee Party” redux) and by Dyspepsia Generation, where it is asserted that I am “having entirely too much fun.” Perhaps so, but I’m not yet earning entirely too much money, so hit the freaking tip jar!


Category: Conservatism 101

Comments

Comments are closed.