Who's responsible for partisanship?

[Paul Hood]

This is a good article about how the media pretends both sides are to blame for partisanship.

<snip>
A classic example is a recent Washington Post column by David Broder, a justly-respected reporter and columnist famous for, and much beloved because of, his advocacy of bipartisanship. "The roots of political gridlock in Washington and of the hyper-partisanship dividing "red" and "blue" America," Broder wrote in May, can be seen in the fates of two lawmakers. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a moderate, survived a near-death primary challenge this spring, while Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.), another veteran moderate, announced his retirement, paving the way for a likely Democratic takeover of his heavily-unionized district. These two races "illustrate how the ideological lines dividing the parties are being etched ever deeper," Broder opined, as if describing some impersonal geologic force. Indeed, Broder connected these two races to a decades-old realignment that "has been so gradual that its effects are often overlooked": the slow fading away of conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Northern Republicans.

Broder is of course right that such a realignment has taken place. But the vast majority of truly right-wing Democrats defected to their natural modern home in the GOP years ago. The interesting question is what's driving the process now. Broder didn't venture a guess, but the answer is implicit in the examples he chose. Quinn is retiring from a party that has treated moderates like him with disdain. Specter was almost bumped off by Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a conservative hardliner whose campaign received substantial funding from ideologically-uncompromising right-wing groups such as the Club of Growth.

Nothing remotely like this has occurred on the Democratic side. Sure, a number of moderate-to-conservative Democratic Southerners, such John Breaux (D-La.) and Bob Graham (D-Fla.) are retiring this year. But with the exception of Zell Miller (D-Ga.), none seem to be doing so because of anger at, or pressure from, the liberal wing of their party. Quite the contrary: hand wringing over the loss of moderate Southern Democrats is a party-wide obsession. Indeed, Senate Democrats were so afraid of losing Miller's vote in the Senate that neither his frequent and virulent denunciations of the party leadership nor his decision to endorse Bush for re-election provoked a single public rebuke. (By contrast, when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last month questioned the wisdom of cutting taxes during wartime, the GOP Speaker of the House, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) questioned whether McCain understood the meaning of sacrifice.) And it's hard to remember the last time a moderate Democratic senator faced an ugly, well-funded primary challenge by a hardcore left-liberal, the way Specter did from his right.

That the Democrats are still pretty congenial to their centrists suggests the degree to which the party has become, if not less partisan, then surely more ideologically moderate. Indeed, the recent Democratic primary in Pennsylvania illustrates the point. To challenge Specter in November, the state's Democratic voters chose Rep. Joe Hoeffel (D-Pa.). A member in good standing of the New Democrat coalition in the House, Hoeffel represents a majority-Republican district and supported, among other things, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and the Iraq war resolution.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0406.glastris.html

[benfranklin1776]

1. Good article indeed.

Sums up the error of the media's reporting on the state of modern politics in America succinctly and accurately. The blame for the current degraded state of political affairs is not to be shared equally as it has been occasioned by the radical Republicans' desire to deliberately polarize the political process. Nevertheless that is not how the media tells the tale. The media somehow manages to apportion blame for the current state of political divisiveness equally though, as the author points out in the article, such apportionment is in no way supported by the evidentiary record.

From the article:

"The modern GOP, however, has no use for bipartisanship. As a conservative maxim
originally coined by Dick Armey, the recently-retired Republican majority leader, puts it,
"Bipartisanship is another name for date rape." It is almost impossible to imagine any
leading Democratic politician or activist voicing the same sentiment. For better or for
worse, they remain bound to the Washington establishment's notion that bipartisanship is
a virtue to be striven for.

Meanwhile, the GOP is busy exporting its hypertrophied partisanship outside the
Beltway, overturning even more previously-accepted standards of political behavior
along the way. When Republicans won a majority in the Texas legislature in 2002, they
proceeded--at the behest of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas)--to rearrange the
congressional districts that had been drawn following the 2000 census, the first time in
modern history that a legislature had redistricted in between the taking of censuses. The
aim was to squeeze out six or seven conservative Democrats who usually voted with the
GOP, simply because replacing them with conservative Republicans would cushion the
GOP's majority in the House.

This GOP strategy is now spreading to other states. As the Denver Post's John Aloysius
Farrell reported last year--in a rare article that put responsibility for increased
polarization where it belonged--the legislative tactics pioneered by Washington
Republicans are appearing in once-collegial state legislatures, where the differences
between parties are usually not as apparent. "We are trying to change the tones in the
state capitals--and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship," leading
conservative activist Grover Norquist explained to the Denver Post. Why? On the belief
that, as Patrick Buchanan once articulated, if the country can be polarized between hard
conservatives and hard liberals, the majority of Americans are more likely to take their
chances with the former than with the latter. Yet unlike Farrell, most national pundits dare
not state the strategy that conservatives themselves admit they are using to polarize state
politics. Instead they affect the value-neutral, pox-on-both-houses tone that the
otherwise estimable Washington Post columnist William Raspberry employed recently
when he bemoaned the effects of gerrymandered redistricting. "Political campaigns are
increasingly divisive," he wrote. "Moderate voices are marginalized in both major
parties."

[coda]

2. Excellent article.

Thanks Paul.

Republicans work overtime to divide the country, even trying to poison state politics and bemoan the fact that *'s brand of WOT is not being supported. :eyes:

Their political power is more important than the well-being of the country and as bad as it is that they don't give a damn, worse still is apparantly their base doesn't give a damn that they don't give a damn.

Imagine the investigations and heads rolling if a Democratic Administration had lied to Congress to the tune of $100 billion+ to get a bill passed.

[spooky3]

3. very insightful; thanks!