David Broder: Slobbering Half-Wit

Image credit: Screenshot of Cujo by Echte Tunus

David Broder took a break from sniffing Hillary Clinton's pantie drawer today to impart this bit of wisdom on us:

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a potential independent candidate for president, has scheduled a meeting next week with a dozen leading Democrats and Republicans, who will join him in challenging the major-party contenders to spell out their plans for forming a "government of national unity" to end the gridlock in Washington.

Bipartisan Group Eyes Independent Bid

Yep. Gridlock. It's a bipartisan problem, according to Broder. Broder's clearly lost what little was left of his mind. There's nothing bipartisan about gridlock. As usual, Digby's way ahead of him, and me, on this:

They [Republicans] use their time out of power to grow their movement and one of the main ways they do this is by obstructing anything positive the Democrats want to do. They are organized around the principle of being insurgents --- outsiders --- victims. It is not in their interest to cooperate with Democrats.

Maybe Broder and Evan Thomas and the rest of the bipartisan brigade think that all of that is in the past and we can begin a new era of good feeling with the red and the blue bleeding into a lovely shade of mauve. But from where I sit, even with the best of intentions, the onus is on the Republicans to prove that after more than two decades of non-stop razing of decent political discourse and partisanship so fierce they are willing to take down the government if necessary, they are finally willing to work with Democrats to "get things done."

I don't think they're there yet, do you?

Bipartisan Zombies

Digby then showed this graphic from McClatchy:

I don't know if they kept to that breathtaking pace or not, but they've obstructed far more bills than any other opposition ever has in the Senate. How many times has Harry Reid, the Democratic Majority Leader called them on this tactic? Once. Just once, in all that time. Reid, for reasons best known to himself, decided to let this happen without a fight. Presumably, he felt that was the way to break that gridlock thing. As anyone with the least bit of sense could have predicted, that didn't work out too well.

And yet Broder, the raving little putz, seems to think that there's a bipartisan problem. I'll let Digby handle that one:

Isn't it funny that these people were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush seized office under the most dubious terms in history, having been appointed by a partisan supreme court majority and losing the popular vote? If there was ever a time for a bunch of dried up, irrelevant windbags to demand a bipartisan government you'd think it would have been then, wouldn't you? (How about after 9/11, when Republicans were running ads saying Dems were in cahoots with Saddam and bin Laden?) But it isn't all that surprising. They always assert themselves when the Democrats become a majority; it's their duty to save the country from the DFH's [Dirty Fucking Hippies] who are far more dangerous than Dick Cheney could ever be.

Bipartisan Zombies

These guys were nowhere to be seen while the Republicans didn't even allow amendments by the opposition in the House, for twelve smegging years. Yet, when the Democrats decided to retain those rules for a few days to get the budget passed after the Republican Congress had been unable to pass it for four months, the only thing you heard from these guys was how unfair it was that the Democrats used their own rules against them to finally get the government unstuck. In short, they got past the gridlock. The Broders only come out when it looks like the progressives might take charge.

To me, their dishonesty is so patently obvious that it's depressing. This is all going on in Broder's town, on Broder's beat. There's no way he couldn't be aware of it, short of some sort of very selective case of amnesia.

Yet there are folks, if this crew of snake oil salesmen is any indication lots of them, who seem to think that this sort of discussion is reasonable. In fact, science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has written a book based on this ridiculous idea. I think these people need to sit down for a while, shut up, and read something about American history. Whether it has to do with slavery, the gold standard, Social Security, or workers' rights, this has always been a country that has seen bitter divisions. Yet, in the end, we managed to work out compromises that worked more-or-less acceptably. Even in the case of slavery, that compromise lasted for almost a century before it erupted in a war that seems inevitable in retrospect.

That's how we do things here - we argue, we fight, loudly, boisterously, and often to the great annoyance of those uninterested in the outcome. In the end, though, we figure out how to work things out. Frankly, that's mostly because there are always people who'll do whatever they can get away with, and the rest of us inevitably have to stop them. Right now, those people are winning, and people like Broder just enable them.

If you don't like partisanship, I suggest you move to Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan. They don't have problems with partisanship there. Not for long, anyway. It's nice and peaceful in cemeteries. Nobody argues with your ideas there, no matter how unfair, sadistic, or insane they might be.

Meanwhile, I'll stick with the living.