Bipartisanship Is All but Dead

Newsweek by Jonathan Alter | Feb. 18, 2009 (News Analysis)

The American primary system allows a handful of activist voters to determine who runs the country.

Say sayonara to "kumbaya." Bipartisanship is all but dead in Washington. President Obama cut a deal to win passage of his necessary—if not sufficient—stimulus bill with the last three moderate Republicans in Congress. But his effort to put a true conservative, Judd Gregg, in his cabinet turned out to be a bridge too far. While Obama wins points for coming across as a gracious and accommodating leader, his dream of a less polarized politics has been ... Full Story »

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by Doug Greer - Feb. 18, 2009

The big question is: even if they think the stimulus is a rotten piece of sausage, why wouldn’t more of them want to help their ailing constituents? Why not team up with a honeymooning president whose popularity is three times that of his predecessor? Part of the answer is baldly political. Republicans hope to break the new president’s momentum—make him “fail,” as de facto GOP chairman Rush Limbaugh urged—so they can say “I told you so” in November 2010.

Throughout the `90’s all the reasonable people were purged from the Republican party. Kevin Phillip’s book, American Theocracy, describes how the GOP has been transformed into “the first religious party in U.S. history”.

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