A better explanation...

This one is for Andy. You posited a rational confusion with how things are working in Washington these days. My comment did not get to the source of the matter, but this post by James Fallows does a much better job. For example this bit from a congressional aide:

"I've missed almost all the punditry this past week... but what I've seen seems almost like a lot of misleading fluff designed to fill the void that should follow an understanding of the foregoing, at least on the subject of 'why no bipartisanship?' There's really nothing more to be said about "why no bipartisanship," once one recognizes the GOP party discipline. On this issue, it's absolutely astounding to blame Obama or even the Congressional leadership (although Pelosi and Reid leave much to be desired otherwise). It's doubly astounding that the GOP did it once before, less perfectly, but with a very large reward for bad behavior in the form of the 1994 mid-term elections. Yet no one calls them on it effectively, and bad behavior seems about to be rewarded again...

This just loops around to the notion that people just do not understand how our system works. If one party can maintain party discipline. Then there can be no bipartisanship:

"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'

"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'

"GOP member: 'You know I can't vote for the bill.'

"Dem member: 'Then why should we put it in the bill?'

Because I can't get enough of this stuff, Ezra Klein pops in and delivers the most succinct explanation I have seen, and why it is so corrosive.

The problem with believing that Congress runs on ideology rather than electoral interests is that it perpetuates the harmful misconception that legislators of good faith can get together and agree on policy, and that when that doesn't happen, something has gone wrong, or the policy in question is terribly extreme. We tell the public to expect agreement and then tell them to be disgusted when that agreement never manifests. It's a recipe for cynicism, and it's not accurate.

This is how Congress works: The majority party wants to govern. The minority party wants to make the majority a failure at governing. If you want to predict congressional outcomes, you'd do a lot better sticking to those two principles than following the optimistic statements of the media and the bipartisan hopes of the commentariat.

-Cheers

-edit