The Rejection of ‘Both Sides Do It’ — Washington Post Edition
There is a remarkable op-ed in today’s Washington Post, with the even more remarkable title: Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. You might want to stop and just mark the day you read that from one of the bastions of beltway common wisdom.
Even better, go read this great piece written by both sides — Thomas Mann from Brookings and Norm Ornstein from AEI.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
Those names were legendary deal-makers too — understanding that while you may have your own ideas, the business of governing was more important than some teenager-style dumb stubbornness just for the sake of the dumb stubbornness.
And this:
We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.
Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?
And the Press is one of the keys, right? A Fourth Estate interested in accountability and information (which is different than narrative) would certainly make it harder for the Allen Wests of the world to claim that there are 70 or 80 communists in the Congress. The persistent laundering of the most extreme statements and views of the current GOP pretty much makes the press an enabler of this stuff — constantly mainstreaming the worst of the worst.
Is today April 1st?
@J “Is today April 1st?”
Would be that it were.
I’d like to think that it’s just Obama that makes all the Republicans go nuts. So when Obama leaves the Presidency, will the GOP become a normal party again? Or is this utter nuttiness something we need to put up with until someone spanks the GOP and spanks them hard?
So when Obama leaves the Presidency, will the GOP become a normal party again?
If Republicans went back to their previous positions, they’d be where Democrats are today.
See, the thing is, Republicans no longer have to win elections to implement conservative policies. Extremism has proved highly successful for conservatives.
Republicans have discovered that if they stake out extreme right positions, Democrats will moronically follow them to the right and implement moderate conservative policies for them. And then the GOP gets to call it socialism and run against it. This is the circus that passes for centrism and bipartisanship today.
The biggest thing damaging Republicans today is probably their War On Women, and they did that all themselves. No Democrat laid a glove on them.
Or is this utter nuttiness something we need to put up with until someone spanks the GOP and spanks them hard?
Spanking? LOL. Republicans have repeatedly assumed the position, and Obama helps them up instead of administering the spanking. Nobody who wants to spank Republicans can get elected. And we can’t even bring ourselves to spank Democrats who won’t spank Republicans.
So the only thing that will work now is a wave election that casts out Republican and Democratic conservatives alike at every level of government. Only then will they – maybe – re-evaluate their platforms.
Both parties need to take three giant steps to the left.
That article is refreshing – especially the 60 vote is normal theme. That one – and I heard liberals and Dems using it, too – drove me crazy.
I’d like to think that it’s just Obama that makes all the Republicans go nuts.
It isn’t. I think it would be ANY Democrat, really. One of the reasons I finally decided to support Obama back on 08 (and it was hard to choose between Hillary and him) was that I thought we had already seem how batshit crazy the GOP was over her husband AND her. I seriously thought that the Derangement Syndrome was localized to the Clintons — but that turns out to be completely wrong. The Derangement Syndrome is focused on Any Democrat.
Which makes the problem that much worse. Provided you are interested in governing and not just ideological posturing. Because the GOP side is never going to show up to govern, unless they think they can completely run the board.
Truly cannot wait till this clown is shown the door and gets that one last taxpayer-funded trip back to Chicago.
Don’t worry, 2017 will get here someday.
Obama keeps his beating stick locked in his desk drawer, yet Republicans act like he is beating them daily. At least now he is beginning to remind them once in a while that he does have the stick.
“I’d like to think that it’s just Obama that makes all the Republicans go nuts.”
Except that before that it was Bill Clinton who made them all “go” nuts, and one reason I was willing to back an unknown like Obama was that I already knew how nuts they’d act if Hillary got elected.
In short, I’m not sure that they “went” nuts so much as, like an Alzheimer’s patient losing control, started to become incapable of even minimal efforts to hide the nuttiness.
like an Alzheimer’s patient losing control
Unfortunately this may be literally true.