Talking about Bipartisanship

Steven Benen crystallizes the problem with all the talk of "bipartisanship" with two fabulous posts today.

His first post dealt with the actual ideological problems with with all this talk, and puts it in the proper historical context.

David Waldman reminded me the other day that Republican opponents of Social Security and Medicare used some of the same ridiculous arguments then that we're hearing now. That's absolutely true. It's worth noting, though, that in those eras, there were plenty of centrist and center-left Republicans who rejected the nonsense and worked with Democrats on achieving progressive policy goals.

Those days are long gone. We're now watching negotiations with Republicans like Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi, who are not only conservative, but fundamentally reject the goals the majority hopes to achieve through reform.

This is hopelessly twisted, and evidence of a political system that not only doesn't work, but doesn't know how to work. To reiterate a point from a couple of weeks ago, bills with bipartisan support have traditionally been the result of one party reaching out to moderates from the other party to put together a reasonably good-sized majority.

This really is the point of the issue. If individuals absolutely reject what you view the problem as being, they can not have constructive input. Because they do not believe the premise.

His second post, even more, illustrates how tragically broken our system is at times. Or, it could just mean someone needs to be to dick punch Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wy).

But definitely the posts are worth the read.

-Cheers