The Politician's Way

CNN reports that now some Republican's are joining the Democrats in trying to plan an exit date from Iraq. What I read from this is that Democrats are winning at the "I'm unwilling to budge" game. The Republicans have some sort of control over every branch of the government, yet Democratic strategy is garnering them some slow gains. Rather than grudgingly allow the majority to rule, as it did during some of the Clinton administration, Democrats today have decided to polarize the party issue to colossal proportions. They have blocked and objected, almost to a one, everything the Republicans have championed. If its not a Democrat's bill or nominee, its probably going to have a hard time getting acceptance from even one of them right now. And by now its getting tiresome to the public. The public doesn't want such polarized politics -- they cause conflict and generally make the public feel that the politicians are wasting our time and money. Thats not a good way to get elected. And the public is feeling that about both sides. But the Republicans have a majority. If they would stick to their guns and stay united they could pass the public on the idea that they are being reasonable and the Democrats are being obstructionist. Its my personal opinion that most of the time neither side is all that reasonable, but I think that right now Democrats are really pushing the party thing to the limit. But instead, weak Republicans, the kind that have to pull publicity stunts like demanding the renaming of French Fries (while public support is behind the sentiment), are scrambling to maintain their image. They are afraid that if they don't do something they will be seen as worthless by the public and they will lose their office. And so they side with the Democrats to try to seem like they are being 'bipartisan' and reasonable. In doing so they endanger the advantage of having a majority -- a majority is worthless if you can't get the people in your party to vote with you. So some weak Republicans who are more concerned about keeping their jobs than getting things done are making sure that the Democrats can keep preventing the Republicans from achieving anything they want to. And it's short-sighted and stupid on their part. If they would just stick with the party then they could go to their constituency and tell them about how Deomcrats are blocking their attempts to make progress. Instead they are letting the Democrats win and making the rest of the Republicans look bad rather than the Democrats. My analysis is this will lead to even less being accomplished by the gov because now nobody has a majority and the policy of politics over progress is maintained. Long live bureaucracy and career politicians!