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« Chatting Across the Grand Canyon | Main | What Have We Learned? » September 20, 2006Right Off the CliffIn the vein of my last post, the Republicans are prepared to make Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the Republican leader, which would make him majority leader if the Republicans hold the Senate. Unlike the good people at the Washington Monthly, I'm actually fond of McConnell's stand on campaign finance reform (he's against it), but I don't see him as a particularly good majority leader. I know a lot of people don't like bipartisanship. When I hear people talk about it, it's clear that the Republicans are screwing the Democrats on bipartisan legislation. Unless I'm talking to Republicans, in which case they're equally certain the Democrats define bipartisanship as Republicans voting for Democratic proposals. So there's not much support for bipartisanship on either side of the political fence, and that's a shame. That's a shame because, while I don't think the Global War on Terror is nearly as big a threat as is claimed by some, I think it's a big enough threat that we need a government that is more interested in figuring out how best to deal with it than in finding a way to garner political advantage out of it. And, I should note, I think the Bush administration bears the lion's share of the guilt for this. Had they gone to Congressional leaders of both parties in the fall of 2001 to discuss what the government needed to do and what laws were required to make that happen, these debates about wiretapping, banking programs, and so on would not have occurred. And if those programs had been properly vetted through Congress, and the President had honestly solicited the opinions of Democrats in order to come up with a bipartisan plan to fight this enemy, there would not have been leaks like those we have seen about various antiterror initiatives, or if there had been, they would have been denounced by both sides. What's done is done, of course. But continuing to fight more with the Democrats than with the enemy, as the Republicans seem determined to do, will only help our enemies. Senator McConnell may have a lot of good qualities, but the ability to work with the Democrats isn't one of them. The Republicans' decision to make him their leader says nothing good about our prospects for success against militant Islam in the coming years. Posted at September 20, 2006 03:50 PM
Comment policyI apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog. Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsAndrew: this TNR article (via TAPPED) may be of interest: In late 2000, even as the result of the presidential election was still being contested in court, George W. Bush's chief pollster Matt Dowd was writing a memo for Rove that would reach a surprising conclusion. Based on a detailed examination of poll data from the previous two decades, Dowd's memo argued that the percentage of swing voters had shrunk to a tiny fraction of the electorate. Most self-described "independent" voters "are independent in name only," Dowd told me in an interview describing his memo. "Seventy-five percent of independents vote straight ticket" for one party or the other. Once such independents are reclassified as Democrats or Republicans, a key trend emerges: Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of true swing voters fell from a very substantial 24 percent of the electorate to just 6 percent. In other words, the center was literally disappearing. Which meant that, instead of having every incentive to govern as "a uniter, not a divider," Bush now had every reason to govern via polarization. This ran counter to Rove's previous thinking. In 2000, he had dismissed the tactic of running on divisive issues like patriotism, crime, and welfare as "an old paradigm." And Bush had followed his advice by explicitly reaching out to the center-left. For instance, during the campaign, he held a press conference with a dozen gay Republicans and sharply criticized the GOP Congress for a plan to save money by slowing distribution of tax credits for the working poor. But Dowd's memo changed all that. The return of polarization on the part of the GOP leadership is a very deliberate tactic. Judging by the Dowd memo (and the post-2000 hardening of GOP rhetoric) the days of Republicans courting Independents (and, by default, bi-partisanship) may be over. Posted by: matttbastard at September 20, 2006 07:24 PM Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |
