In the alternate universe of the conservative brain, bipartisan still means "do it our way, or we'll negotiate in bad and still spite you by not supporting our own compromise."
"This Democrat bill won't stimulate anything but more government and more debt," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., on Tuesday. "House Democrats [will] use a time of national crisis to fund big government priorities under the guise of stimulating the economy."Imagine! A Republican flaying Democrats for his own party's constant sin.
Hypocrisy, it's what they do.
2 comments:
it's all so juvenile. Political parties allow one more excuse for grown people to act like three year olds- I don't like you because you're a (insert political affiliation here). Republicans need to suck it up and get over themselves.
No one realizes that both partiea are the same, the spectrum makes a full circle. We could get so much more done if America hadn't become an unofficial two-party system.
I have a somewhat different view! These two political parties share some features but not all. For one, they will always disappoint most of us. The nature of democracy is that you never get everything you want out of government because it always involves balancing of many interests in messy compromises. And both parties are wedded to the centrist consensus.
But the Republicans are far tougher at political infighting than the Dems. Their caucus is far more disciplined. In some ways, the tolerance of dissenting votes is actually a strength of the Democrats, where the Republicans insist it's their way or the highway.
The spectrum does make full circle, as you say. Extremists on the left and the right are both totalitarian, violent, and unjust. But that's communism and fascism. Liberal Democrats like me are a long, long, long way from communism, so much so that the visible values of the Soviet Union were always alien to me. I think today's conservatives, as well represented by the GOP, are much closer to fascism (though not of course there). So, I think there's an asymmetry.
In short, I think the Democrats pay too much attention to governing and not enough to politics (persuading Americans of their good will and the rightness of their proposals), while the Republicans pay too much attention to politics and almost none to governing.
Post a Comment