Sullivan demonstrates his utter abandonment of reality:
In the minority, our job is to 1) make the majority’s life miserable, grinding the House and Senate floors to a halt, and building a narrative of the Democrats as broken and incompetent, and 2) offer big, bold alternatives to this mess like the Contract did in 1994.
Whatever you do, don’t cooperate for the common good.
Honestly, WTF? This is a guy who is considered to be a serious thinker in politics, and he’s just suggested that what the GOP should do, among all their woes, is treat a Democratic trifecta in the Fall to warm support and cooperation, even.
Because, I suppose, Democrats have been so accommodating of the Bush administration and the Republican congress of 2002 – 2006.
Honestly, Sullivan has drunk way too deeply of the Obama Kool-Aid. His eagerness not only to see his crush elected, but leading an immensely popular administration is coloring every political post he makes these days. Look, it’s simple: Any minority party is going to do their damnedest to foil the majority party every time. That’s a given, but when you look back at what the Democrats have done with Iraq (where a modicum of cooperating for the common good would have served the nation better than Pelosi’s antics), judicial nominations, hypocritical “culture of corruption” whinging, and floor shenanigans, you can bet the GOP is drooling at the opportunity for vengeance. In this age of hyper-partisanship, of which the Democrats have partaken of just as full a cup as the Republicans, snide remarks like Sullivan’s are really pathetic — More of the “Good for me, but not for thee” bullshit that permeates the Obama campaign and the legions of its media supporters.
Hell, I’m even going to start appending the “Netroots” tag to posts about Sullivan. He sounds and acts just like them anymore, links them frequently, and deserves to be associated with them. That he’s still considered some sort of “original thinker” tells you a lot about our media today.
Filed under: Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Democrats, Election 2008, Netroots, Politics
I’ve always thought the concept of “bi-partisanship” was crap. Republicans aren’t elected so they can adopt Democrat issues and causes, they are usually elected for the exact opposite reason. Same with presidents. The main problem with political parties, and when they piss off their constituents the most is when they DON’T fight for partisan causes and principles for which they were elected.
The press only supports bi-partisanship when its in favor of liberal causes. You never seen them complaining about Dems stalling Bush’s appointments (like the inoperable FEC or the Supreme Court) and Sullivan sure didn’t love bi-partisan support for the Defense of Marriage Act.
The Founding Fathers felt that the rise of political parties was the worse thing that could happen to political process. The Republicans have proved them right. As a citizen who would really like to see some of the problems solved, the Republican concept of bringing government to a grinding halt because they’re not in power is so third grade recess. I would suggest you grow up but….oh, never mind.
Bullshit. The “founding fathers” set the government up with checks and balances expressly so that the government could not run rampant. The government has a limited ability to do good- it has an infinite ability to do harm.
And since when it is only the Republicans who “bring government to a grinding halt” – the Dems have threatened several times recently to stop all business in Congress over temper tantrums they couldn’t get their way.
Its not ‘third grade recess’ to fight as hard as you can to not only pass legislation that your constituents support, but laws they _don’t_ want passed. Lying down for the opposition is a good way to get voted out of office, and its a dereliction of duty.
Although of course I’m sure “richard” would support the Democrats lying down and allowing Republicans to pass their agenda unopposed when they resume the reins of power, in the interests of consistency, right?
From a historical standpoint, Richard is correct. The Framers were not very hip on political parties. But that didn’t stop parties from growing around some of those very men. And those men sure didn’t turn down the support they recieved from those parties.
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/outusgov/parties.htm
From a political science standpoint, I would just point out that if those wise men were that set against parties, they would have included laws against their formation. Especially after it was clear that parties were developing.
Well which founding father was against political parties, exactly? Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams all not only were members of early parties, they helped found them. Washington was the only “non-partisan” president we’ve ever had. For being so against parties, they sure were vociferously partisan. Jefferson is famous for it, and you don’t get more founding father than the guy who wrote the Declaration. Madison and Monroe had more than a little to do with the drafting of the constitution, and they were plenty partisan in their time.
I think you are conflating the founding fathers opposition to FACTIONALISM (see the Federalist papers) with partisanship. The two are not synonymous. And being anti-factionalist is far from advocating cooperating with the opposition to pass laws antithetical to the will of your constituents. In fact, there is a good argument that allowing the opposition to walk all over you is malfeasance and a dereliction of duty.
And further than that, parties schmarties. “richard” is claiming that the founding fathers were against gridlock. I think its exactly the opposite. They favored limited government and gridlock helps ensure that.