No Labels, the ostensibly post-partisan group founded in 2010 to promote “a new politics of problem solving,” launched a press offensive this week. The group’s newly minted national leaders, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, penned a Washington Post op-ed Monday and appeared on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. …
In part, it’s the self-congratulatory, schoolmarmish earnestness surrounding the campaign. No Labels actually gives out a label: the “Problem Solvers Seal” for candidates who have committed “to join a group of Problem Solvers.” It’s as cloying as a “Mean People Suck” bumper sticker and promises to be just as effective.
No Labels demands that “at all joint meetings or sessions of Congress, each member should be seated next to at least one member of the other party.” They pushed this idea before last year’s State of the Union and got more than 200 members to look for a cross-aisle BFF to sit with. If that led to an outpouring of legislative comity in 2012, I missed it.
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