Monday, December 6, 2010

Goody... more "civility" or something.

Though it didn't fare too well the first time around, it looks like liberal William A. Galston and um, conservative, David Frum are cranking up Son of The Coffee Party.

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.


And just what will The Coffee Party Pt. II aim to accomplish?

Over the next 12 months, No Labels plans to organize citizens' groups in every state and congressional district. Among other activities, these citizens will carefully monitor the conduct of their elected representatives. They will highlight those officials who reach across the aisle to help solve the country's problems and criticize those who do not. They will call out politicians whose rhetoric exacerbates those problems, and they will establish lines that no one should cross. Politicians, media personalities and opinion leaders who recklessly demonize their opponents should be on notice that they can no longer do so with impunity.


So, by this calculus, it is implied that a Republican Congressmen who does not vote for the DREAM Act in this congressional session is somehow a less-than-worthy pol because he is clearly thwarting the will of the public. And to be fair (and civil, because that's just the type we are around here) a Democratic congressmen who does not reach across the aisle to defund portions of ObamaCare in the next Congressional session when the Republicans have the majority is somehow not serving the interests of this country as defined by No Labels.

While we're at it, we'd like to get an operational definition of "rhetoric that exacerbates the problem"? Who within No Labels gets to vote on what qualifies and what doesn't?

And who should their first call-out be? How about the meanie who wrote this?

What man or mouse with a fully functioning human brain and a résumé as thin as Palin’s would flirt with a presidential run? It makes the political biography of Barack Obama look more like Winston Churchill’s, despite the fact that the 44th president breezed into the Oval Office as little more than a glorified state senator.

That would be Joe Scarborough. Member: No Labels.

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