In every program, Charlie Brown, there are always a few last-minute changes

In every program, Charlie Brown, there are always a few last-minute changes

When the 10 Republican Senators brought their offer to the President last week, the pitch was to hold Biden to his promise of “bipartisanship”. The fact that the “deal” was a pitiful ¼ loaf with only Republican priorities and no real compromise, is a perfect example of how Republicans have, once again, defined bipartisanship as “I get everything I want” and “you get to declare this a bipartisan deal”.

I have been thinking about the whole bipartisan shtick and its recent history.

Let’s start with the modern definer of political discourse — Newt Gingrich. In 1994, Gingrich broke the 40-year Democratic hold on the majority in Congress. For a lot of reasons, his bomb throwing, take-no-prisoners, hard ball brand of politics was understandable. The Republicans had been in the minority for so long, they had a well-earned complex. Gingrich did advance the Republican agenda and redefined the expectations of both parties.

Fox News launched in October 1996. Roger Ailes built a new organization that amplified Gingrich’s political style on steroids. For the next 12 years, the Republican Party and Fox News pumped the outrage machine and things started to get weird.

By 2008, the Democrats held the House, the Senate and the Presidency. Obama really wanted to work with the Republicans, but as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 showed, adjusting the amount of stimulus to considerably less that most credible economists thought necessary to placate Republicans would yield him exactly no votes in the House and three votes in the Senate.

During Obama’s first 2 years in office, it became clear to everybody (accept Obama) that the Republicans had no intention of working with the Democrats. But they had a BIG majority — 257 to 178 in the House and 59 to 41 in the Senate. So, they did some big things. Wall Street Reform and Obamacare.

The Fox outrage machine and Koch money behind the Tea Party caused the Republicans to not only take back the House, it gave them state houses all over the country in a critical, census year. The Republicans gerrymandered dozens and dozens of congressional seats to their advantage.

This is where things started to get really weird. Through the rest of Obama’s 2 terms, the radical right fought everything and anything presented by the Democrats. By 2015, a small but radical group had formed the Freedom Caucus. They refused any form of compromise and were so disruptive of their peers, that they drove John Boehner from the Speaker’s chair. By the 2016 election cycle, the House was not a functional body.

Over in the Senate, even less is getting done. No fan of the Freedom Caucus, Mitch McConnell is holding up most legislation and all of the judicial appointments.

Then Scalia dies in February of 2016.

McConnell holds up a Supreme Court appointment for nine months.

All the above is simply the overture to the great drama that was the Trump Administration. Angry Republicans all over the country threw their support behind a rich, spoiled sociopath with a history of bankruptcies, lying and a sense of privilege that allowed him to rationalize screwing his business partners and employees. Trump was the perfect Fox News/Freedom Caucus candidate.

The next four years resembled an opera or a Greek tragedy more than a functioning government. The outrage machine on Fox News became superimposed on the front page of the New York Times. Trump sucked all the air out of every room. There was no discussion or action regarding policy or legislating. There was Trump conducting dangerous foreign policy, governing by executive order and packing the executive branch with incompetent and ideologically radical sycophants.

Unfortunately for everyone else, Trump and the Freedom Caucus didn’t have anywhere near enough votes to pass any legislation other than a HUGE tax cut for the rich that the rest of the Republican Party was happy to get behind.

Then the Republicans lost the House.

McConnell sat on every piece of legislation that Pelosi and the Democrats passed while appointing as many Federalist Society judges as he could. A shrewd political maneuver.

Then Ginsburg died.

McConnell executed an appointment of a Supreme Court judge in 7 weeks. While showing him to be an incredible hypocrite, this was also a shrewd political maneuver

Then Trump lost.

Up to this point, one could argue that the Republicans were just being Republicans, exercising their power and playing the hand dealt them.

But then there was an insurrection on the US Capital.

OK — I don’t know about you, but I’m done. The “whatever it takes” strategy of

Gingrich has led to this ignoble end.

Just last week I hoped for an opportunity for Biden to cut some kind of “bipartisan” deal with the Republicans. The offer from the 10 (1/5th of the caucus) Senators was a joke.

After 25 years of bad faith, rope a dope offers and Lucy pulling the football away at the last minute, I am done. Republican legislators have lost all credibility.

Go ahead Joe. Get the legislation passed however you can. I don’t care about optics. I don’t care about decorum. I don’t care about what Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram or the Republican caucus thinks about it.

I want Joe Biden to get it done.