".....newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system "dysfunctional," riddled with "brain-dead partisanship" and permanent campaigning."
"Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a "shock" to Congress by voting incumbents out en masse and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups."
February 17, 2010
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh says his stunning decision not to seek a third term was prompted by the partisanship that has gripped the nation's capital, stunting progress on the country's most pressing issues.
Quote:
Partisan Votes
When the House put its health care overhaul legislation to a vote last November, only one Republican joined 219 Democrats to guarantee its passage.
A month later, the Senate passed its own health care legislation without any Republican votes.
The House and Senate last year passed the president's economic stimulus package on similarly partisan lines: No GOP votes for the bill in House, and only three in the Senate.
There's no doubt that Americans share the centrist Democrat's disgust with how Congress is conducting itself these days: In at least a half-dozen major polls taken this year, close to three-quarters of those surveyed said they disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
But is the D.C. dysfunction really so unusual? In a word, yes.
Historic Rancor
Historians and politicos alike say the current rancor on the Hill is, indeed, historic, and has been building over recent decades to a level unlike any in modern times. Some had to reach back to the late 1800s and the progressive movement to find comparable Capitol Hill acrimony. It exceeds that of the 1940s, when Harry Truman ran against a "do-nothing" Congress to win the White House, and the sharp partisanship of the more recent administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
"People who remember the period of the mid-20th century likely remember a time of a lot of cross-party coalitions in Congress," says Morris Fiorina, a senior fellow at Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution. Those long-ago memories may include a coming together under President Reagan to shore up Social Security.
"But," says Fiorina, "it's been terrible for a long time."
While personal reasons were surely also behind Bayh's decision — and that of several other centrist senators who have decided not to seek re-election this fall — the moderate middle's disgust with business as usual on the Hill and its growing anti-incumbent fervor cannot be disregarded.
President Obama's ascension to the Oval Office was seen by many of his supporters as a change from partisan politics. And, indeed, historians say the country was due for one of its periodic political shifts. But Democratic leaders over-read the mandate that Obama's election represented, Fiorina says, and the president has made his own missteps.
Quote:
Fed Up With Partisanship
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh (D) announced Monday that he would not seek a third term in the U.S. Senate, citing partisanship that has stymied the people's business, including the Senate's failure to create a bipartisan commission to tackle the nation's debt, and its inability to put together a jobs bill. (Read Bayh's statement.)
Widespread anger at Congress and its inaction can be measured in many ways. One? A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that Americans, asked to look forward, said they were most optimistic about the strength of the American people, and most pessimistic about the corruption and inefficiency of their own government.
According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans of voting age consider themselves independents, while 33 percent say they are Democrats, and 27 percent identify themselves as Republicans. Independents were evenly split when asked whether they lean more to the Democratic or Republican party.
The anticipated historic shift to a new conversation now appears indefinitely on hold while party members — even the remaining small clutch of once-reliable aisle-crossers — retreated to their corners.
There Really Used To Be A Middle Ground
The current polarization began in the 1960s, with the Democrats' internal divisions over Vietnam, says historian Buck Melton. Later, he says, it grew as the Nixon-era Watergate scandal divided Republicans. And it has accelerated with new media and parties shrunk to accommodate a narrowing menu of special interests.
But earlier, from the 1940s into the early 1960s, there existed something of a national consensus on issues, he says, and the two main parties "tended to meet somewhere in the middle."
"The Eisenhower administration, for example, simply slowed down FDR's New Deal and didn't try to end it," says Melton, distinguished writer in residence at Mercer University.
The Evolution Of The Partisan Politician
The parties' retreat to their more extreme current positions naturally caused them to shrink, say political historians.
The parties now represent a much more homogenous point of view, Fiorina says: Every Democrat has essentially the same constituency — and every Republican is in the same boat.
It's made the geography much more difficult for people like Bayh who are "cross-pressured," Fiorina says — for example, a Democrat from a rural district where constituents may be more socially conservative and pro-gun. Or a Republican in a socially progressive state like Connecticut, which no longer has any Republicans in Congress.
Fiorina cites several mileposts along the path toward partisanship and polarization: party leaders' continuing aggressive efforts to redraw congressional districts into safe havens for their members; ongoing demographic shifts; and the more recent disconnect between Washington politicians and their constituents back home.
Members of Congress used to interact with cross sections of their constituents — say, at Kiwanis Club lunches or at meetings of the local Rotary and Lions clubs.
"At one time, they'd come back home and speak at these gatherings to a cross section of people: those of different political parties, different economic status," he says.
With the decline of those groups — and the rise of single-issue organizations that members now meet with more often — lawmakers are pulled to extremes on issues including abortion, gun control and gay rights, the argument goes.
The shrinking/polarized parties observation is not new, but it has become a growing obstacle to getting work done in Washington, observers say.
So Whose Fault Is It?
Former Sen. Dave Durenberger, a Republican from Minnesota who served from 1978 to 1995, says he has seen the dramatic changes and the evaporation of comity play out over the past three decades.
"During the period of time I was there, you could just watch the decline," he says.
He lays the blame largely at the doorstep of his own party for its focus on abortion — which, he says, "sapped the strength out of the middle of our party." And he laments the influence on the party of social conservatives like the now-deceased Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
"My gut tells me that my party right now hasn't got a foundation to it," he says.
Former Sen. George McGovern — not surprisingly — agrees.
"What's changed is the Republican Party, because they've got a right wing that's so intimidating you really can't work with them anymore," says McGovern, a liberal Democrat from South Dakota who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1972.
He recalls his days working with Republicans like Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. "The moderates just aren't there anymore, or they're too intimidated by the Karl Roves of the world," he says.
Or by the adherents of the budding anti-tax Tea Party movement.
Melton, however, cautions that blame can be cast on both sides.
"There is some truth that Republicans deserve some blame," he says. "But it's only half the truth.
"In the last 30 years, we've had some of the most doctrinaire presidents — and that includes Clinton and Obama," Melton says.
A shift away from hyperpartisanship doesn't appear in the offing anytime soon.
The Tea Party, third-party stirrings and disappointment in Obama have made members of Congress jittery about that old "hand-across-the-aisle" way of getting work done. And that, says Fiorina, could suggest a continuing period of political uncertainty, partisanship and trading of Capitol Hill control.
It's ludicrous and if people don't see it en masse, whatever happens serves us right.
__________________ "President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster Tuesday night was written at a 10th-grade level, which, according to analysts, may have gone over the heads of many in his audience." - The Dumbing Down Of America Continues...
It is disgusting that there is no common ground. Too much finger-pointing and politics. Both parties disappoint me. We need to focus on the important issues and get fiscally conservative and Constitutionally literate.
All incumbents need to be voted out of office and get rid of (most of) the political favors and affiliations that are corrupting this country.
Get our focus on:
1) Jobs - we still manufacture less and less every day.
2) Deficit Reduction - China will come collecting one day,..
3) Reduction of Government - Bureaucratic waste at all time high while 43% pay no federal taxes
4) Reduction of taxes and ever expanding IRS- what country has a 39% tax rate and survived?
5) Social Security - Quit raiding and fix.
6) Border security - A few strategically placed suitcase nukes and we are living in the 1800's. Plus, Illegals are breeding like rabbits, taking away jobs from the middle class to poor, and further burdening our system
7) Health-care Reform Start by fixing Medicare & Medicaid before jumping off the cliff with grandiose (and unread) bills
8) Go Green - Nuclear plants, Solar, new technologies, Drill before others get all the oil off our coasts, we can hold Exxon and their like accountable.
__________________
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
Those are just the same talking points thrown out there.
Too big of a bill... A bill the CBO said would reduce the defict by a trillion or so over a decade and more after that. No death panels, no mandatory sperm donations, no micro-chipping...
Get back to the constitution... What elements? State rights on their own? So marriages can't cross state lines?
But specifically:
"4) Reduction of taxes and ever expanding IRS- what country has a 39% tax rate and survived? "
A lot of countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Norway highest millionaires per capita), Germany, Australia, - much higher top level taxes for most of our country's existence.
__________________ "President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster Tuesday night was written at a 10th-grade level, which, according to analysts, may have gone over the heads of many in his audience." - The Dumbing Down Of America Continues...
It is disgusting that there is no common ground. Too much finger-pointing and politics. Both parties disappoint me. We need to focus on the important issues and get fiscally conservative and Constitutionally literate.
All incumbents need to be voted out of office and get rid of (most of) the political favors and affiliations that are corrupting this country.
Get our focus on:
1) Jobs - we still manufacture less and less every day.
2) Deficit Reduction - China will come collecting one day,..
3) Reduction of Government - Bureaucratic waste at all time high while 43% pay no federal taxes
4) Reduction of taxes and ever expanding IRS- what country has a 39% tax rate and survived?
5) Social Security - Quit raiding and fix.
6) Border security - A few strategically placed suitcase nukes and we are living in the 1800's. Plus, Illegals are breeding like rabbits, taking away jobs from the middle class to poor, and further burdening our system
7) Health-care Reform Start by fixing Medicare & Medicaid before jumping off the cliff with grandiose (and unread) bills
8) Go Green - Nuclear plants, Solar, new technologies, Drill before others get all the oil off our coasts, we can hold Exxon and their like accountable.
There is common ground, but it has to be NEW ground. Not ground poisoned using the same old arguments! Damn! It's just like congress up in here. All you brilliant MF's and you won't see the commonality? Damn.
__________________ "If President Obama could walk on water, the Right would claim it's because he cannot swim"
As a Republican, Im fed up with my own party's roll in this. The final straw for me was the bill on reducing the deficit where7 republicans who co-sponsored the bill voted against their own freaking bill! The Dems deserve their own fair share of the blame early on in trying to write all the bills like the healthcare and stimulus bill by themselves and then Pelosi and Obama saying when asked about it, "well we won the election." But the republicans are taking this to a new level.
I can honestly say we need either every incumbent voted out in a message OR we all need to vote in a 3rd party. A message needs to be sent...
Wow, I find myself agreeing with Riddle.......and I am not drunk.
Only point I do not agree is taxes, as Crew pointed we are not the highest taxed people on the planet so the doom statement is false. Also, as Obama said today, taxes have been reduced for 95% of the population under Obama.
8) Go Green - Nuclear plants, Solar, new technologies, Drill before others get all the oil off our coasts, we can hold Exxon and their like accountable.
Drilling is not green, building nukes while I think is a good idea but until we have a plan in place to deal with the waste, it is not green, it is very dangerous. That has been the big hold up on building new nukes, we don't have a viable plan.....yet.
The fusion reactors in france power almost all their homes. They create no waste reusing everything. I can not believe the french have technology that we do not seem capable of making?? If we cant make the damn things, then hire the french to make them for us! Hell, they are already offering to make warships for the russians! We have the technology to make GREEN nuclear reactors. In doing so, we can totally eliminate our reliability on dirty coal.
The fusion reactors in france power almost all their homes. They create no waste reusing everything. I can not believe the french have technology that we do not seem capable of making?? If we cant make the damn things, then hire the french to make them for us! Hell, they are already offering to make warships for the russians! We have the technology to make GREEN nuclear reactors. In doing so, we can totally eliminate our reliability on dirty coal.
Pebble Bed Nuclear Technology.
We are way behind the technology curve because of antiquated perceptions based on 3 Mile island and Chernobyl - This technology will not create such problems and it is 1,000X safer.
I am pissed that our country is not leading the charge on this one but Obama seems to have reversed himself and is talking more seriously about Nukes so maybe there is some hope.
__________________
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
The fusion reactors in france power almost all their homes. They create no waste reusing everything. I can not believe the french have technology that we do not seem capable of making?? If we cant make the damn things, then hire the french to make them for us! Hell, they are already offering to make warships for the russians! We have the technology to make GREEN nuclear reactors. In doing so, we can totally eliminate our reliability on dirty coal.
While it is low amounts of waste, France still has issues getting rid of the waste. While they reprocess it, it does not disappear but is reprocessed and shipped to Holland and placed in tanks awaiting solutions, but the waste does not miraculously disappear. They are looking at deep geological experiments but are still looking for a site to pull off these experiments. So, the waste disposal issue is still a problem and "no waste" plants is false.
That has to be solved before we start throwing up new plants. I am for nukes on a certain level but waste is a serious issue and one that has not been solved yet. So it is not a green technology...yet.
We are not leading the charge because no one has solved the waste issue yet, shipping out of country is not a solution for the US, we have to find the technology to get rid of it. I have some friends that are scientists and I am told the US is frantically (their words) looking to solve this issue and have been for 20 years. Again, the US's self imposed moratorium on building new nukes has always been about the waste issue, not what happened on 3 Mile Island.
The sad par about the retirement is it is clear hat he is one of the ones who gets it. So we loose one of the few who gets it and still have the rest of the crap.
If only everyone listened to me at he last election, If you want change we can believe in vote Obama into office and then every other incumbent out.
At the stroke of a computer key, and just like that I'd exited the Republican Party after 30 years of active membership. The context might sound impulsive, but I'd been thinking of becoming an independent for a long time. I just hadn't expected that a trip to renew my driver's license would mark the end.
Just before my photo was snapped, I was asked if I wanted to register to vote. For me, the question was borderline offensive. I first registered after turning 18 in the spring of 1980 and haven't missed an election since. And I'm not just talking presidential races. I mean all elections. Congress, town council, school board, whatever.
"I'm already registered," I offered. Next came the unexpected question of whether I wished to change my political affiliation. I'm not sure why that is asked of someone renewing a driver's license, and I question whether it is even appropriate for most. But in my case, it was the only impetus I needed.
Years ago, I grew tired of having my television or radio introduction accompanied by a label, with some implied expectation that what would then come from my mouth were the party talking points. That was me 26 years ago, when I was the youngest elected member of the state delegation to the Republican National Convention, but not today. I'm not sure if I left the Republican Party or the party left me. All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable.
The national GOP is a party of exclusion and litmus tests, dominated on social issues by the religious right, with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone who doesn't fit neatly within its parameters. Instead, the GOP has extended itself to its fringe while throwing under the bus long-standing members like New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, a McCain-Palin supporter in 2008 who told me she voted with her Republican leadership 90 percent of the time before running for Congress last fall.
Which is not to say I feel comfortable in the Democratic Party, either. Weeks before Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh's announcement that he will not seek reelection, I noted the centrist former governor's words to the Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib. Too many Democrats, Bayh said in that interview, are "tone-deaf" to Americans' belief that the party had "overreached rather than looking for consensus with moderates and independents."
Where political parties once existed to create coalitions and win elections, now they seek to advance strict ideological agendas. In today's terms, it's hard to imagine the GOP tent once housing such disparate figures as conservative Barry Goldwater and liberal New Yorker Jacob Javits, while John Stennis of Mississippi and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts coexisted as Democratic contemporaries.
Collegiality is nonexistent today, and any outreach across an aisle is castigated as weakness by the talking heads who constantly stir a pot of discontent. So vicious is the political climate that within two years, Sen. John McCain has gone from GOP standard-bearer to its endangered-species list. All of which leaves homeless those of us with views that don't stack up neatly in any ideological box the way we're told they should.
Consider that I've long insisted on the need to profile in the war against terrorists. I believe that if someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has actionable intelligence on future terrorism, you try the least coercive methods to extract it but ultimately stop at damn near nothing to get what you need to save American lives. I want the U.S. military out of Iraq, but into Pakistan. I'm for capital punishment. I think our porous borders need to be secured before we determine how to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already within them. Sounds pretty conservative. But wait.
I think that in 2008, the GOP was wrong to adopt a party platform that maintained a strict opposition to abortion without at least carving out exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother's life. I was appalled that legislators tried to decide Terri Schiavo's end-of-life plan. I don't care if two guys hook up any more than they should care about my heterosexual lifestyle. And I still don't know what to think about climate change.
I think President Obama is earnest, smart, and much more centrist than his tea party caricature suggests. He has never been given a fair chance to succeed by those who openly crow about their desire to see him fail (while somehow congratulating one another on their relative patriotism). I know he was born in America, isn't a socialist, and doesn't worship in a mosque. I get that he inherited a minefield. Still, the level of federal spending concerns me. And he never closed the deal with me that health insurance is a right, not a privilege. But I'm not folding the tent on him. Not now. Not with the nation fighting two wars while its economy still teeters on the brink of collapse.
All of which leaves me in a partisan no-man's-land, albeit surrounded by many others, especially my neighbors. By quitting the GOP, I have actually joined the largest group of American voters. According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 39 percent of Americans identify themselves as independents -- compared with 32 percent who say they are Democrats and 26 percent who are self-described members of the GOP. Nowhere is this more pronounced than locally, where a shift away from the Republican Party has taken place in the four bellwether counties surrounding Philadelphia.
I will miss casting a ballot in the spring, as current state election law prohibits unaffiliated voters from voting in GOP or Democratic primary elections. Instead, I'll join the others who bide their time until fall, when we can temper the extremes of both parties.
"My decision should not be interpreted for more than it is: a very difficult, deeply personal one. . . . I value my independence. I am not motivated by strident partisanship or ideology."
Those are Bayh's words, not mine. But he was speaking for both of us.
__________________
Last edited by Lawdog; 03-02-2010 at 09:35 AM.
Reason: cut off a few words
Great article Lawdog! As a McCain-Kemp republican, I am close to feeling the same way.... McCain losing this year would about do it for me.
I am a big Kemp supporter but McCain is not the same man he was. When he ran for Prez....he changed. Tea baggers are not worthy of our support much like when hippies ran amok in the 60s and 70s.
I think the changes people saw in McCain were mostly brought on by three events:
1) When he damn near lost all his political capitol after the immigration reform. He was so beat up after that, that he was so down in the polls and nobody gave him much of a chance to be President in 2008. Some point to the immigration reform as a change in McCain. I point to it to show he hadnt changed. McCain from the beginning was someone who always worked across aisles. He would hold his moderately conservative views and work to get as much of those ideas to fruition even if it meant compromise. Compromise does not mean you get all you want. It doesnt mean the other side gets all they want either.
2) The democratic nomination was so huge and created so much political interest that McCain would not be able to count on the same love from independents that he received in 2000. That support carried him back then. He couldnt count on it in 2008.
3) Huckabees win in Iowa was the second dagger. People were saying McCain wasnt a true conservative. It didnt look like he could hold enough votes in the republican party to carry the nomination. Especially not with his stance on the war in Iraq. He now had to prove his conservative credentials. The changes in him that I saw were this new rhetoric coming out of his camp. The only time during that election that I saw some change in him was when he promised to buy back mortgages which if you remember Obama was against and then proposed after he became President.
I can say it again here and with complete honesty: I could have voted for Mccain if he had stayed the old McCain. When he became McCain 2.0. Narrow minded,playing to the base, alienating Latinos, picking a clearly unqualified veep. The possibility of gaining all that power corrupted him. He became willing to do anything to win, including dishonoring himself. Embracing the Tea Party terrorists is the last straw. He was electable, now he is unrecognizable.
__________________ "If President Obama could walk on water, the Right would claim it's because he cannot swim"
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