February 15, 2008
Hooray for Partisanship
Now that the GOP primary contests are settling down (even though Governor Huckabee could close that 4-1 delegate gap anytime...) I am getting my partisan, pragmatic mojo back.
Like other ThreeSourcers, I am wedded to ideas over party. There is nothing special about the letter 'R' to me except that, for my adult voting life, those with the R brand were at least a little bit better at keeping the freedom we enjoy. It is dammed easy to enumerate a dozen things President Bush did that you don't like, but I cannot imagine any ThreeSourcers would like to turn back the clock and elect President Gore or President Kerry.
I am told that America cries out for post-partisanship and I see examples at the margins. But our structure of government (Madisonian Democracy, 2,010 have called it) fosters (mmm, Foster's...) two-party conflict. Right now, the game is about Democrats vs. Republicans. And today, we see the stakes:
Democrats voted yesterday, for the first time in decades, to hold two White House officials in contempt of Congress. Hours later it emerged that Ms. Pelosi has apparently decided not to vote on the warrantless wiretap bill passed by the Senate days ago. This means that the Protect America Act -- which conferred Congressional support to wiretapping suspected al Qaeda terrorists -- will expire at midnight today.We admit to wondering earlier this week whether Congress's interrogating Roger Clemens was the best use of the Representatives' time. On the evidence, the country will be safer if the House takes up tilting at windmills.
This is from a WSJ editorial. The bill has passed the US Senate and everyone knows that it has the votes to pass the House.
Yet Speaker Pelosi will not bring it up for a vote. Everyone who voted for a "Blue Dog" Democrat because that particular candidate was good on guns and reasonable on security -- this is what you get. You may have voted for a great person, but you put a San Francisco lefty in charge of the House and a Searchlight Socialist in charge of the US Senate.
Leader Reid came around, but Speaker Pelosi is willing to let this bill expire. Thanks, Blue Dog voters. There are not too many days that I am proud to be a partisan hack. But today is one.