Bipartisanship- The Biggest Lie of All
Washington, D.C., a town which thrives upon its arms-distance relationship with anything approaching the truth, is a town steeped in lies. Lies are to Washington, D.C. what neon lights are to Las Vegas, what steamed crabs are to Baltimore, what beer is to Milwaukee, and what music is to Nashville.
Whether it be Republican, Democrat or Independent, lies are the stock-in-trade of our nation’s capital. Politics, in and of itself, is the art of the lie and the bigger the lie, the greater of its propensity to pervade the pursuit of public policy. How a politician can look into his or her own mirror at the end of one day, or the beginning of another day, is one of the great mysteries of human existence.
The biggest lie in all of Washington, D.C. rears its ugly head each and every time a politician runs for office. We always hear the clarion calls for bipartisanship, in every election year, because politicians are well aware of the public’s desire that both parties work together to solve the nation’s problems…or so we have been led to believe…and that, my friends, is a truckload of crap.
Notice, for instance, how when Democrats are out of power, whether it be in the White House, or in either house of Congress, they speak of the need for Republicans to cross the aisle in the spirit of bipartisanship. Republicans, being the spineless jellyfish that they are, accede to such requests in order to bear the appearance of bipartisanship, and usually get tromped upon as a result.
Flip the scenario where Democrats hold the majority in either, or both houses of Congress, or when a Democrat sits in the Oval Office, and calls for bipartisanship evaporate into thin air.
“Republicans need to know that elections have consequences.”
That is what the last Democrat President had to say when Republicans were locked out of any discussion whatsoever concerning his signature (and only) legislative achievement, that being ObamaCare. From the members of his own Democrat party, came the nodding heads and all-knowing smiles that accompanied his pronouncement, while their Republican counterparts sat silent, stewing in their own frustration and hoping for another day.
That day came in 2016 when Republicans, having retaken majorities in both the Senate and the House, saw the election of a Republican President, but we would be hard-pressed to see any such degree of partisan unity or support for the current President, given the back-stabbing he receives from far too many members of his own party. Perhaps this is why the late so-called Republican senator from Arizona, one John McCain, was so grotesquely lauded by Democrats during the extended week that was his funeral. Like no other senator in the history of the United States, McCain could be relied upon to consistently oppose a President of his own party, and cross the aisle to vote with his Democrat counterparts, time and time and time, again.
Can anyone imagine for one second, a President Trump acting with the unbridled arrogance of his immediate predecessor, by systematically locking out Democrats by saying, “Democrats need to know that elections have consequences,” when it comes to any issue before Congress? In each and every case, Donald Trump has called for Democrats to join with Republicans in forging a bipartisan coalition to address the problems which plague us, and his efforts to do so have been rewarded with condescension and derision from his Democrat (and, in some cases, Republican) opponents who are fixed upon one idea, and one idea only…to destroy his presidency and overturn an election.
Remember this, if you remember nothing else:
If Democrats succeed in their eleventh-hour ploy to derail and prevent Judge Brett Kavanaugh from taking his place as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, then no Republican President will ever be able to successfully nominate a Supreme Court justice, ever again, regardless of which party holds a majority in the United States Senate…
…and that is what the specious claims by a liberal professor in California are all about, truth be damned.
-Drew Nickell, 19 September 2018
© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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