In the Spirit of Bipartisanship
Monday, November 9th, 2009 at
12:28 am
Even Newt Gingrich admits that in his days in Congress, on the average about 50 percent of the Democrats voted along with the Republicans.
Considering the one-sided Democratic vote in the House of Representatives on the health-care reform bill and its chances of passage by the Senate, here’s Washington Post’s Tom Toles’ latest take on the issue of bipartisanship.
Tagged with: Bipartisanship • cartoon • Health care • reform • republicans • Spirit • Tom Toles
Filed under: Health care • US • congress • conservatives • obama • politics • republicans
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On this we can agree. And it is too bad it is this way, too.
Harrison, it is too bad. Not much can be accomplished with this sort of a mindset.
As the official “pollyannas” of the electorate, our most flimsy inclinations have come to merit vast expenditures of campaign (?corporate?) money gleefully spent for even a most modest “leaning” to one side or the other. Logical persuasion through the careful presentation of alternate choices has long ago been replaced with raw, unexamined, unthinking emotions. The already road weary chant of misdirected self-interest now successfully trots out the absolute evil or deception of the opposing side of any issue. We have been carefully groomed to abandon our interest in “winning an argument or a debate” in favor of the absolute — and, in our equally crafted dreams — permanently discrediting the opposition.
The old idea of public service in the Congress was to stand with thoughtful, sincere ideas about the good of the country — even when the chill of current political winds blew in one’s face. Now the stifling effect of the same divisive (culturally codependent) absolutism which has been installed in voters has — through the gradual migration of voter to representative –come home to nest in the Congress.
What are the actual odds that every thoughtful, sincere Republican — save one — would have precisely the same point of view on a matter such as health care? Does this reflect a serious, sincere consideration of the issue?
Even more compelling, is this athletic model of puppetry what we as citizens really want for national management or is it simply a fantasm of ever cheaper, always more depressingly sterile, thoughtless, narcotic ideology?
Happily, the polls are with me on this — even if it foreshadows the creation of a new political party to replace the wreckage of the GOP. As to the usual MeanMesa plug, “Another Task for Obama.”
http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2009/10/another-task-for-obama.html
Chad, this indeed appears to be exactly what you call an “athletic model of puppetry”. People who believe blindly in what the demagogues tell them.
A really sad an alarming evolution of our former democracy…
I thought the purpose of this blog was to expose hypocracy. Yet that is the centerpiece of this column. You note that the Democrats voted in a block. What about the Republicans? I am a life-long Republican, and I am bitterly disappointed that Republicans refused to engage on the health care debate. When the Blue Dog Democrats took conrol of the bill in the House, they asked Republicans to work with them. They were told, NO. I learned this directly from a Republican Congressman who wanted to offer some amendments that would have made the bill more in line with economic principles that we believe in. The Republican leadership is more interesting in embarrasing the President than fixing a totally broken health care system. That is why I, too, believe we need to break up the two-party system. On that we agree.
There is no question that many conservatives are more interested in embarrassing the president, than in the good of the country. That is not to say, that the Democrats are doing that well. As a matter of fact, I believe that they have been doing a rather dismal job, considering their majorities in both houses of Congress.