Infuriating Broderism

Scot Lehigh gets back to the naive, sanctimonious bullshit today:

[I]f a new president was genuinely willing to reach out and compromise, some of the reflexive partisanship might start to fade.

Lehigh speaks lovingly of the center without ever acknowledging that the hard-right Republican Party's success at moving the center waaay over to the right came because the Democrats were not partisan enough in the face of Newt Gingrich and Duhbya. Lehigh approvingly quotes Garrison Nelson:

The moderates have basically been disenfranchised by the polarization of contemporary politics. The center wants back in the game - and that is the appeal of both Obama and McCain.

This is not just wrong. It's a lie. The left has been disenfranchised. That's why we "raucous left-wing advocacy groups" have to fucking scream to be heard. We're up against the combined power of the monolithic Republican political operation with its dominating media machine. That's why we view calls for civility as patronizing; pundits like Lehigh are constantly telling us to lie back and think of England.

Now, I'm sure that most of us would love to get back to comity and mutual respect. But, despite their disingenuous claims, the Republicans would not. Polarization and vilification have worked for them.

True constructive bipartisanship will never happen until the Democrats gird up and say, "NO MORE." We've compromised and compromised and compromised for little or nothing.

It takes both sides to achieve a fair bipartisanship, just as it takes both sides to fight. The Republicans have won too much by unilateral warfare on their political opponents to give it back in a make-nice compromise.

So, please, pretty please, stop telling Obama he has to take on his own party, when for seven years and longer, the Republicans in lock-step power have taken no prisoners other than Joe Lieberman and the psychotic Zell Miller among the Democrats.