The Definitive Word on Partisan "Gridlock"

Greg Seargant nails it when he says, "The way to reduce "Partisan Gridlock" is to further weaken the GOP.

....

These questions are kind of relevant. Partisan gridlock happens because people -- and by extension, political parties -- disagree about stuff. One party wants to do one thing on a particular issue. Another party says No. The first party offers a few concessions. The second party still says No. That's where "partisan gridlock" comes from -- underlying disagreement on issues -- and in our current case, the fault for our "partisan gridlock" isn't equally distributed between the two parties. Rather, it's almost exclusively the fault of the Republicans.

You aren't allowed to say this, but it's true. If you don't believe me, ask the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. They proposed a bunch of solutions to Iraq. The Democrats largely embraced these solutions. The Republicans, by contrast, didn't. ....

In fact, I would argue that over the past 30 years, the Republican party has lost any interest in governing. Instead, what we have is a desire for power and wealth.

I went to school at UMass with former Tom Delay Deputy Chief of Staff, and now a convicted member of Abrahmoff's "entourage", Tony Rudy.

I served in the SGA Senate with him with him, and we were both nominally "Conservatives" in that body^*, and we got along fairly well, he was the first to shake my hand when Nummo News^†, the Black Student newspaper, condemned me on its front page for calling for their sanctions as a result of illegal electioneering in the SGA presidential race. We got along, and we sometimes traded private snarky comments during debates.

This has given me some insight into Tony's feelings on governance, and considering the positions that he has held since UMass, it is not unreasonable to extend those views to a significant portion of the Republican party.

Republicans, with the qualifiers listed above, believe government to be evil. If a government program exists, it is a bad thing^™. If it is successful it is even more evil, because it weakens our morality^‡ and compromises out strength.

When you come to government service with this philosophy, there are only two reasons for that service, money and power.

This makes Republican obstructionism fairly easy. There is no other goal to be accomplished.

It's why, at least for now, reaching across the aisle is a waste of time. There are no Everett Dirksens in the current Republican Party leadership.

^*It's not that I had an epiphany and became a liberal. It's that the left wing of the SGA Senate were all the "US Out of North America" crowd.
^†Seriously, I think that half the Senate shook my hands before someone told me why....Strange political experience.
^‡Yes, it does seem like General Jack D. Ripper's "Purity of Essence" from Dr. Strangelove.