Dear God, I actually agree with Rush Limbaugh. From the CPAC conference, thanks to the clipping skills of Jon Stewart:
To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we have politically cleaned their clocks and beaten them. [standing ovation]
Yes, Rush, that’s exactly it. When your side wins, it’s slash-and-burn to Atlanta, and the opinions of anyone who disagrees with you is so much salted earth. When my side wins, we’re expected to be bipartisan and gentle, and it’s not “really” a political victory unless everybody comes to the table singing Kumbayah.
The hell with that, and the hell with you. Those of us who see Obama as having the potential to be this century’s FDR believe in him precisely because of the breadth of his agenda. To the extent that your side or conservative Democrats convince him to aim low, to nibble at the edges of our systemic problems and the unholy debacles of the last eight years, to horse-trade principles, he will be a failed president and important to history only for his race. He was elected to be something better than that.
So I say, let’s adopt Rush’s idea as our own. We have three times the House majority that the Gingrich “revolution” had. We are two short of a filibuster-proof majority; one short if the Senate and Democrats get serious about seating Mr. Franken; seven more than we need if we stop this polite fiction of needing a supermajority for every bill, and force the Republicans to take the political hit of actually filibustering popular legislation.
Enough. Basta. Dayenu. I have seen the light, and that is to generate populist fury that allows the Democrats to grow a spine and begin bending their opponents over backwards. A message to those timid Congressional leaders: you don’t have to be nice to them. As soon as they get the chance, they’ll do it to you. Again.
Well, first of all, you’re arguing with Rush Limbaugh? Do you need suggestions for a better way to waste time? I suggest watching competitive paint-drying. There’s a marathon on ESPN9 right now…
Second, it was Obama that declared his presidency to be one of bipartisanship (much like the last guy was going to be a compassionate conservative – funny how that works, huh?)
Finally, I still find it supremely ironic that for six years, the Democrats bitched about not being able to stop George W. Bush and the “rubber-stamp” congress because they were the minority party and didn’t have sufficient numbers to influence policy, and now that they have widespread majorities, they’re bitching about how the Republicans are influencing policy. It either means that the Republicans are spitting into the wind and the Democrats are intentionally getting wet, or that the Democrats had the ability to influence policy all along, and were unwilling or unable to do it.