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As Congress and the Biden Administration engage in increasingly frantic negotiations around a bipartisan infrastructure bill, many of us are left wondering: Is any of this worth it?
So how do we convince Manchin, Sinema, and others who want to keep the filibuster that McConnell isn’t going to let any GQPer play “Bipartisan Bingo” in the Senate?
The Reconciliation Package will save this country
They both already know it. McConnell is buying them off, sadly. Manchin continually votes against the needs of his constituents, and I’m beginning to think that Sinema is a GOP plant.
Proof???
The filibuster must be set up so that it is not McConnell saying “do it”.
It must take the sort of effort that it required years ago.
The dearth of discussion on this is malpractice.
The great irony of all this is that bipartisanship is threatening Democracy and if Democracy dies, well there is no such thing as bipartisanship in an autocracy, just ask Russia.
There is a single issue, DEMOCRACY, that to survive requires an end to Senate filibuster and therefore the need for bipartisanship.
That is Republicans have lost at democracy and so are using there power in the states to pass not only voter suppression laws but more insidious voter nullification laws in accordance with a road map provided by Chief Injustice Roberts and the Republican and not conservative Supreme Court. Republicans are further using the Senate filibuster that requires bipartisanship to keep the Federal Government currently controlled by Democrats, but it won’t be much longer if Republican State controlled voter suppression and nullification laws govern the 2022 midterms, to stop the federal government from enforcing U.S. Constitutional guarantees of the right to vote and have votes counted.
Therefore bipartisanship must die for Democracy to survive and without Democracy, by definition there is no bipartisanship.
The Reconciliation Package will save this country
Agreed. It will also “save this country” from the Republican Party and most likely keep Democrats in power for decades (if they don’t self-destruct). McConnell knows and fears this. The Democratic Party needs a victory. I think the ‘bipartisan’ Republicans need a victory as well. It could cripple McConnell’s power grip and put Lardass further back in the country’s rear view mirror.
The possibility that one senator could muck all this up is impossible to consider. Biden to the rescue!
Agreed on your points, my friend.
The GOP is so devious that ordinary S.O.P. is out (see my post above about the filibuster)…The only thing above-board we can do is message.
I’d like 1,000,000 Jen Psaki’s.
Republicans are not acting in good faith.
That is the bottom line. Fuck them. Beat them at the polls.
As far as I’m concerned the “Republican” party is really nothing but a bunch of traitors and Nazis. Why would anyone want to deal with those kinds of people? Screw 'em.
Sorry, bipartisanship died a very long time ago, at least as early as when the GQPers, and especially McConnell vowed to block everything proposed by President Barack Obama.
Agreed!
Republicans are only relevant to this process to the degree that moderate Democrats allow them to be.
(Emphasis mine.)
We should stop calling folks like Manchin and Sinema “moderate” Democrats. Just as there is no middle ground between an arsonist and a firefighter, there can be no middle ground between democracy and autocracy. There is no way to strengthen democracy while also allowing autocracy to flourish, because the two are necessarily zero-sum, and not coincidentally because these democracy reforms are desperately needed as a remedy to that very autocracy.
We should stop giving Manchin & Sinema cover while they aid & abet fascists. Their position is absurd on its face, and the territory they are trying to stake out for themselves does not exist.
Didn’t Grover Norquist say bipartisanship is another name for date rape? And that was ages ago.
This is the GOP operating philosophy. Everything else is performative bs.
They’ve become nothing but a pro-authoritarian, anti-democracy movement.
Precisely. They didn’t care about bipartisanship when ramming down Trump’s tax cut, refusing to give Garland an up or down vote, or when they confirmed Conehead to the SCOTUS. Why should we give a rat’s ass if they don’t want to participate in governing now?
Bipartisanship HAS died. It’s the transparent illusion of it that needs to be killed off at last. The reason to forget about bipartisanship is because it’s literally not possible these days, so stop pursuing it. It’s like cold fusion or SETI. Waste of time.
One of the big reasons why Republicans are against programs aimed at folks other than their major donors is that regular folks have a habit of actually liking government social programs associated with health care, social security, infrastructure, and worker protection after they have been passed. They see them as “socialism” in the abstract, but beneficial in practice.
This is why Republicans are so hell bent on stopping them. Whining about bipartisanship and the “socialist agenda” is what they do when they’re not in charge, because that’s all they’ve got. Pass these programs and the Republican party knows they’ll be powerless to repeal them…
Republicans have not been acting in good faith since at least the first Clinton Administration. I would put the beginning of their having become a bad faith actor in American politics some time after Nixon’s resignation, probably during the Carter Administration. But definitely by the beginning of the first Reagan Administration.
To sink Jimmy Carter, the Republicans and petrostate agents behind Reagan made sure a timely release of American hostages in Iran would not happen on his watch.