Yes, the minority party in Congress tends to obstruct, but on a scale like this?

“Once you get in these battles where you break into camps, every vote is about the next election,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues. “As soon as the last election is over, those who lost are thinking, ‘What can I do to get back in power?’ and those who won are thinking, ‘What can I do to stay in power?’ When you try to solve problems from the perpetual campaign mind-set, it is very difficult.”

-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), "a South Carolina Republican who occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues," quoted by Carl Hulse in today's NYT

by Ken

So Lindsey Graham "occasionally works with Democrats on difficult issues"? Do his Republican colleagues know about this? Like, say, his fellow South Carolina senator, Jim "Li'l Bug" DeMint? Boy, if word gets out . . .

The Hulse NYT piece is called "As Aisle Gets Wider, Arms Get Shorter," and some of it is actually interesting. If only Hulse didn't feel subscribe to the "On One Hand, On the Other Hand" Code of They All Do It, to make it seem as if the present Republican policy of across-the-board obstruction in Congresss is the same thing minoirty parties have always done.

So naturally Hulse starts out with a "startling admission" by "a top congressman" -- that he "demagogued," zz'voted against an administration priority as a way to score political points as his party battled to regain power" -- and the top congressman turns out to be (gasp) current House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. What Hulse brands "Mr. Hoyer's frank acknowledgement' is that he voted voting against Bush-era debt-limit hikes, and this is presented as equivalent to virtually every Republican congressman and senator voting against virtually every Democratic-supported bill in this entire session of Congress.

Is it any wonder polls aren't showing major backlash against Republicans for their scorched-earth policy of obstructionism? I mean, if this is how the liberal New York Times reports it?

Even Hulse has to retune his equivalences:

Republicans have dug in almost unanimously this year against legislation that at least some should have been able to vote for, whether it was the economic stimulus, health care changes or a crackdown on Wall Street. Democrats did the same thing in the run-up to the 2004 and 2006 elections, with a new Medicare drug benefit providing an example of a policy many backed but did not support with their votes.

Um, sorry, Carl, still not remotely equivalent. Not until we take into account the number of Democratic votes cast for Bush-regime-supported legislation. After all, most of us regard that as the disgrace of the Democrats in Congress under the Bush regime.

And really, the Medicare drug benefit as an example of something Democrats would have supported? That's something that was proposed primarily for political capital, to reposition the GOP from the traditional enemy of Social Security and Medicare to a champion -- well, that and as a big giveaway to the party's big drug-company sponsors. And it was such a dubious proposition that, if we remember, the GOP congressional leadership had to pull every trick in the book to get its own people to narrowly pass. Unfortunately for Mr. Hulse, he actually returns the Medicare drug benefit when, after citing uniquely Republican instances of minority obstructionism, he tells us:

Democrats drew their own stark lines in 2003 when Republicans and the Bush administration coalesced around adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare, an expansion Democrats had sought for years. The plan, which Democrats criticized for its generous subsidies to health insurers, was endorsed by AARP, but House Democrats sought to keep their members from voting for it, though 16 did in the end.

Again, conveniently forgotten is how controversial the AARP's endorsement was, and how much anger this obvious sop to the Bush regime generated both within and without the organization. Isn't it the pits when history refuses to behave? (And ironically, today's Washington Post has a piece called "The not-so-sweet side of closing 'doughnut hole'" -- referring to the doughnut-hole gap in drug benefits created by the Bush regime's Medicare Part D.

Nevertheless, that said, the basic point under discussion is interesting and important, even if (or perhaps especially because) no one has any solutions for it:

"There is no question that partisan parity tends to raise the stakes of any particular election because of the potential for change in majority party control," said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional expert at the Brookings Institution.

While partisanship is a constant in Congress, the unwillingness of the parties to work together seems to be reaching new levels. Some trace the beginning of the current trend back to the early 1990s, when House Republicans were trying to break out of their virtually permanent minority status.

Much to the distress of more rebellious Republicans, House Republicans who had never tasted life in power tended to try to cooperate with Democrats as their best chance of getting things done. It was not uncommon for top Democrats and Republicans to have close and cordial relationships.

But former Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies showed that drawing the sharpest possible contrasts with the opposition could pay political dividends as they gained control of the House, and the see-saw fight for the Congressional upper hand began.
At the same time, a political toll was being taken on the centrist Democrats and Republicans who were most prone to compromise. Many left Congress or were defeated.

Naturally, current Republicans deny their obstruction is political.

Republicans say their opposition is based on substantive differences. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said Sunday that he expected the midterm elections to be driven in large part by the health care votes.
"It will be a huge political issue next year," Mr. McConnell said on the ABC program "This Week," predicting the issue would spill over into 2012 as well.

Immediately afterward, we return to our putatively bipartisan pal Lindsey Graham: "Even with partisan clashes likely to worsen in 2010, Mr. Graham said Congress needed to find a way to get past the mind-set that 'if the other guy wins, I lose' and find a way to deliver legislation more equivalent to a win-win."

No mention is made, of course, of how far the Obama administration, in its desperate quest for "bipartisanship," bent over backwards to make it possible for Republicans to vote with it. If Senator Graham has some magic way to produce this "win-win" result for the two parties, perhaps he'd like to share it?

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