Great Moderates and Centrists in American History

Scarborough rails against Frank Rich and Rush Limbaugh for 'No Labels' attacks
Jeff Poor covers the media for The Daily Caller. He covered business news at the Media Research Center prior to coming to The Daily Caller. Jeff is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama. He is also a political columnist for Mobile, Ala.-based Lagniappe. Governing without labels in the United States - sounds like a pipe dream, right? But that’s the vision of former George W. Bush adviser and John McCain Presidential Campaign Strategist Mark Mckinnon with ...

No Labels: Liberalism Without Labels
Sunday on Meet the Press, three members of the No Labels stable -- Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and media Strategist Mark Mckinnon, donning a wimpy and emasculating scarf that perhaps symbolized the No Labels group -- continued their week-long Public Relations campaign touting their newly formed political group. On Meet the Press, McKinnon proclaimed that the group had success in its very first week of existence because “we brought together...

>em>MTPs Gregory Gives Rare Praise on Scarf
In the rarest of shout-outs in the world of serious Sunday morning political programming, NBC MTP Host David Gregory gave Mark Mckinnon high praise for his chic, non-bulky herringbone scarf. Gregory must have had it planned or quickly thought the scarf deserved high praise right on the spot because the compliment flowed right into McKinnon’s introduction on Sunday. Even NBC’s Andrea Mitchell thought the compliment was rather funny and laughed for a good while in reaction to it as she...

What Does the Right See in Thune?
In every Presidential Election since 1940, the GOP has nominated a nationally known political leader. The closest the GOP came to deviating from the rule was Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George W. Bush in 2000 - and that was not very close. Goldwater’s views were famous even if he was not well known personally. George W. Bush was the massively re-elected Governor of the nation’s second biggest state. By contrast, the Democrats have repeatedly turned to less well known people. ...

Politics Without Labels? What a Silly Concept
A group called "No Labels" is getting an awful lot of buzz these days, despite the fact that it has raised only $1 million. (Though it sounds more impressive if you say it like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies: One. Million. Dollars.) The professed idea behind No Labels is that its members don't believe in labels, by which they mean names such as Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative. Some black-hearted cynics see No Labels as a Trojan Horse for a presidential bid by New Yo...

Palin 'may not help ethics probe'
Republican vice-presidential Candidate Sarah Palin is "unlikely to co-operate" with an inquiry into alleged abuse of power, a campaign spokesman has said. Ed O'Callaghan said the Alaska state legislative Probe had become "tainted" by partisan Democratic politicians seeking to target the Alaska Governor. Mrs Palin, who is John McCain's Running Mate, denies any improper behaviour. A spokeswoman for the Alaska Democratic Party rejected claims that the inquiry had become politically motivated. T...

MORE DETAILS EMERGE: Obama Supported Ousted Honduran Thug Zelaya to Appease Chavez
HOPE AND CHANGE. The Obama Administration knew that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was an anti-democratic anti-Semitic pig whose goal was to become ruler for life like his buddy Hugo Chavez.  Team Obama decided to support him for the greater good of Latin American relations anyway. Barack Obama even cut off aid to Honduras in order to appease Marxist tyrant Hugo Chavez at the expense of the Honduran people. The news that President Obama cut off aid to American ally Honduras did no...

Noemie Emery: 'No Labels' lacks red meat
Justified fun has been made of the "No Labels" contingent, a collection of Palinophobes clutching PBS Tote Bags, those not quite at ease with both major parties, but who tilt more or less to the left. At their premier event, Byron York took note of cultural signposts: No National Anthem. No flags and no eagles. Worst of all, when it came to the sandwiches, attendees wolfed down the veggies and chicken, and left the roast beef alone. This is a bad sign for a political movement, which needs its r...

Arlen Specters farewell: A stinging rebuke to the system
Sen. Arlen Specter: Slamming a system that eats its own (AP) Departing Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday said conservative Republicans who backed Tea Party challengers against establishment Candidates in the recent Elections engaged in political Cannibalism. In his final floor Speech, Specter complained there’s scant room for Centrists like himself in a polarized Senate where civility is in short supply. “In some quarters, Compromise has become a dirty word,&...

Poll: Tea Party Influence Likely in 2012
© UPI/Brian Kersey The 2010 Elections may have been a warm-up for the Tea Party, with U.S. voters saying the movement will flex its muscles in 2012, Rasmussen Reports said. Forty-one percent of voters said they think the Tea Party will play a larger role in campaigns leading to the 2012 Presidential Campaign, while 30 percent said they expect its role in 2012 to be about the same, results released Monday indicate. Twenty-one percent said the movement would play a smaller role in the 201...

HuckaMcCain?
First there was Huck’s support for the recent Compromise on taxes that the president signed into law, and now this. While Huckabee’s actual words on the subject of a healthy diet are much more complex than the headline suggests, it’s the headline that folks are going to read. And yet the author of this purposely sensational headline does have a point: this is, after all, the second time this month that Huckabee has sided with someone named Obama over someone named Palin. Is t...

Trying to Outfox Fox News: CNN Teams up with Tea Party in Debate
© Unknown CNN plans to host a Republican presidential primary debate next year with Tea Party Express, a political action committee that featured Sarah Palin at its events and is now raising money for a new advertising campaign against President Obama. The Cable News network announced Friday that it has teamed up with the Sacramento-based organization to co-host a debate in Tampa, the site of the 2012 Republican National Convention, during the first week of September. The event will focu...

Your Denomination is full of Bolsheviks!
John Wesley, artist's conception via RubensLP at flickr.com I guess the War on Christmas, among other battles, is over, because it now appears that the Tea Party’s Christian Right brigade have found the real villain staining modern society. …METHODISTS!!! Um, what now? Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips has a dream: “No more Methodist Church.” A blog post on his Tea Party Nation page says that on Friday he walked by the United Methodist Building in Washington D.C....

No Labels Hails Tax Cut Vote
Cleaning out my in-box, I came across this e-mail from the “No Labels” co-founders, Nancy Jacobson and Mark Mckinnon, who cited the Bipartisan passage last week of President Obama’s Tax Cut deal as proof that the area between the “warring factions” on the left and the right is “where we can find common ground.” “(F)or the first time in a long time, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass a new package of tax cuts and benefits for those faci...

Joe Scarborough Takes On Rush Limbaugh For Attacking 'No Labels' Group
On Tuesday, conservative Talk Radio host Rush Limbaugh accused the No Labels crowd of being a bunch of "washed-up losers." David Gregory, HOST: We're back, joined by our political roundtable, and look at this finding from our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll about how people feel about where the country's headed. Look at that, 63 percent think the country's off on the wrong track. Mark Mckinnon, you know as a political pro, that that is a really good indication of t...

No Labels? No, thanks.
If you watched Meet the Press on Sunday, you saw former McCain Strategist and Republican media guru Mark Mckinnon along side MSNBC commentator and former Congressman Joe Scarborough.  Both are self professed members of the “No Labels” movement, a movement that claims that “[w]e must put our labels aside, and put the issues and what’s best for the nation first.”  Upset by the hyperpartisanship of modern politics, the group wants to return civility to the public discou

Charlie Crist's Lust for Labels
COLUMN: How did Charlie Crist get accepted into the national "No Labels" movement? He lost a high-profile election, that's how. Until then, the well-traveled Florida Governor, who spent the last 18 years diving like a prairie dog into one public office after another, didn't mind what people called him -- as long as they pulled the lever for Charlie Crist on voting day. If labels were beads, Charlie would look like a balcony on Bourbon Street the morning after the Mardi Gras. Some of the labels c...

New at Reason: Matt Welch on No Labels and the Ideology of Post-Ideology
No Labels, that new assortment of purportedly post-ideological pragmatists like the imperious New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, claims to represent "the vital center." Editor in Chief Matt Welch explains why No Label’s do-something ideology means never having to say you're sorry about Unintended Consequences, regulatory capture, or the broken eggs of individual injustice. After all, Welch writes, by the time those flaws make front-page news, there's always a new problem requiring urgent inter...

Left And Right Attack No Labels Movement
NEW YORK--The new group No Labels held its kick-off at Columbia University last week and announced an effort to try to reform our national political culture offering Bipartisanship, civility and Centrist political solutions. It’s a goal that virtually every recent poll shows a majority of Americans also want. But not so fast. Political pundits from Rush Limbaugh to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who are in the business of amplifying the differences between the two parties, have roundly d...

Suite Talk, Dec. 21, 2010
G.R. Seppala gets Glassner Michael Glassner has been named senior vice president of G.R. Seppala & Associates and president of its government affairs division. Glassner had been senior vice president for external affairs at IDT Corp. and, earlier, Chief of Staff to the chairman of the Board of Commissioners at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 He was also a longtime senior political adviser to then-Senate Majority Leader Bob...

Martinez taps former Florida official to head education department
Governor-elect Susana Martinez selected Hanna Skandera, Deputy Commissioner of education in Florida from 2005 to 2007, to head the Public Education Department. Skandera also served as education undersecretary for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., and was an education policy adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his unsuccessful 2008 Presidential Campaign. Skandera recently served as the deputy Chief of Staff and senior policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Education. Skandera was a...

Martinez picks reformer as public education head (4:44 p.m.)
ALBUQUERQUE - Gov.-elect Susana Martinez has made her pick for New Mexico's next public Education Secretary - a woman who led school reforms in Florida. Under former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Hanna Skandera implemented reforms at middle schools and high schools aimed at improving accountability and giving incentives for high academic performance while ending social promotions. Martinez said reading scores in Florida schools went up dramatically. Bush, in a statement released after Skandera's nomin...

Female Vote Could Prove Decisive for Palin
On a late night during the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial campaign, Democratic former Gov. Tony Knowles and Republican-turned-independent Candidate Andrew Halcro found themselves sitting next to each other in an exit row on an Alaska Airlines flight back to Anchorage following a debate in Fairbanks. Halcro and Knowles had a friendly relationship, which was cultivated in part by both men's shared sense of exasperation over their inability to put a chink in the invisible armor that seemed to shield t...

WikiLeaks' documents: U.S. tried to curb clout of Chávez
Caracas, Venezuela — U.S. Diplomats discussed efforts to counter Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's influence in Latin America and tried to dissuade Russia from shipping anti-aircraft missiles to his government, according to classified documents released by Wikileaks. One secret 2008 document from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia said then-Colombian President Alvaro Uribe urged Washington "to lead a public campaign against Venezuela," adding that the presidents of countries such as Mexi...

Poll: Does Obama think U.S. is exceptional?
Washington (CNN) - The vast majority of Americans see the United States as exceptional, according to a new National Poll. But a Gallup Poll released Wednesday also indicates that nearly four in ten say they believe President Barack Obama doesn't hold this same view. Eight out of ten people questioned in the survey say that based on the country's history and constitution, the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world. The poll suggests there's no partisan divide ...