{"id":4563,"date":"2005-06-28T14:24:03","date_gmt":"2005-06-28T18:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4563.html"},"modified":"2005-06-28T14:24:03","modified_gmt":"2005-06-28T18:24:03","slug":"the-end-of-bipartisanship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-end-of-bipartisanship\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of bipartisanship?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Frist is going to deliver a speech to the Heritage Foundation this afternoon on judicial nominations and how the Senate should approach the likely Supreme Court vacancy. According to The Note, which obtained a copy of Frist’s speech, the Senate Majority Leader will emphasize the need for “civility<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

I won’t be on hand for the event, but one wonders if he’s planning to wink while saying this. After all, this is the same Bill Frist who insisted, during a debate over the nuclear option, that Senate Dems want to “assassinate [Bush’s judicial] nominees<\/a>.” Civility, indeed.<\/p>\n

But the whole notion of a Republican congressional leader emphasizing respectful language got me thinking about how difficult it is to even try<\/em> bipartisanship in the current political atmosphere. It’s not necessarily the case that consensus solutions are out of reach — on the contrary, there are opportunities for compromise on most policy issues — it’s that lawmakers have created an environment in which no one even wants to go to the negotiating table.<\/p>\n

Consider what Democrats have been told in just the last seven days.
\n
\n* Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove accused<\/a> Sen. Dick Dubrin (D-Ill.), among others, of actually wanting to put American troops in danger. In effect, treason<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* From the floor of the U.S. House, Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) accused Democrats of helping to wage a “long war on Christianity,” which hopes to “eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage.” He added that Dems “can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

* Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Republican Conference, argued that congressional Dems have engaged in a “growing pattern” of demoralizing American troops<\/a>. Pryce added that Dems “promote the interests of terror-camp detainees,” and represent the interests of “foreign criminals” and “would-be terrorists.” No one even seems to have noticed this one.<\/p>\n

That’s just the last seven days. In recent months, Republicans — office holders, not just bloggers and Fox News talking-heads — have also accused Dems of being racists, misogynists, and anti-Hispanic for blocking various Bush judicial nominees.<\/p>\n

Belligerent rhetoric is sometimes part of the game and hashing out political differences isn’t always going to be pleasant. I get that. Name-calling, finger-pointing, base-rallying attacks have been the norm for a long while.<\/p>\n

But in all sincerity, I wonder how, exactly, Republicans can expect Dems to come to the negotiating table to work on anything when they’re accusing Dems of being terrorist-sympathizing bigots. <\/p>\n

It’s not just that Dems may no longer believe they can work with Republicans towards common solutions; it’s that they may no longer want to. Someone can only be accused of treason so many times before they decide they no longer want to deal with their accuser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Frist is going to deliver a speech to the Heritage Foundation this afternoon on judicial nominations and how the Senate should approach the likely Supreme Court vacancy. According to The Note, which obtained a copy of Frist’s speech, the Senate Majority Leader will emphasize the need for “civility.” I won’t be on hand for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}