Bipartisanship Is a Mug’s Game

The seeds of our current obstructionist Republican Party were sown during the Clinton administration, when Bill Clinton signed a Republican “welfare reform” bill and, in the Republican view, stole all the credit for it. The lesson Republicans learned motivates them to this day: If a good thing happens with Democrats in charge, Democrats win, no matter who came up with the idea.

This is why, when Obama proposed a health care plan that had been designed and implemented by Republicans, they voted against their own idea: Obama, not Republicans, would get credit for it.

By the same token, Republicans aren’t afraid Democratic ideas like universal health care will fail — they would actually benefit if Democratic ideas failed, because voters would then turn to Republicans. They’re afraid such policies would succeed, and “elect Democrats for a generation.” Further, this approach has not cost them at the polls. Granted, they have to cheat harder and harder to do it, but they haven’t lost enough to convince them that changing would be the better move.

So Democrats who seek bipartisan agreement are playing a mug’s game: The Republican belief system gives them no incentive to cooperate, and major incentive not to.

Which brings us to Democrats who seek bipartisanship. I’m not sure what Democrats can do about Republican intransigence — succeed without them and trumpet that intransigence to the skies would be my first choice, but what do I know? — but even if you want to negotiate, you don’t go about it the way Chris Coons does. You don’t go into a negotiation trumpeting your desire to get a deal done. You might as well wear a “kick me” sign on the back of your jacket and capitulate immediately.

Coons isn’t stupid — in my experience he’s brighter than most public officials — so he has to understand the obvious logic that prevents Republicans from delivering the bipartisanship he craves. This raises some questions. Why does he continue to pursue a course of persuasion that has yielded no results on any major issue in his decade-long Senate career, and why does he undermine himself by advertising his eagerness for a deal?

Good luck getting a News Journal reporter to ask him.