I want to add to some things Jesse said about this huge concern for consensus that’s sprung up in the media under the pretense that they’ve always been all about bipartisanship. Agreed with Jesse across the board—-seeking consensus is a juvenile, naive tactic that just exposes you to obstructionism, as we’ve seen these past few weeks.
The thing is that the cries for “bipartisanship” run on the same cycle as wingnut concern about government spending—-it only comes up when Democrats are in power. Where was the hand-wringing concern over the rights of a minority party when Republicans were completely railroading Democrats in ways that only Matt Taibbi could be bothered to cover? Here’s a refresher:
The GOP’s “take that, bitch” approach to governing has been taken to the greatest heights by the House Judiciary Committee. The committee is chaired by the legendary Republican monster James Sensenbrenner Jr., an ever-sweating, fat-fingered beast who wields his gavel in a way that makes you think he might have used one before in some other arena, perhaps to beat prostitutes to death. Last year, Sensenbrenner became apoplectic when Democrats who wanted to hold a hearing on the Patriot Act invoked a little-known rule that required him to let them have one.
“Naturally, he scheduled it for something like 9 a.m. on a Friday when Congress wasn’t in session, hoping that no one would show,” recalls a Democratic staffer who attended the hearing. “But we got a pretty good turnout anyway.”
Sensenbrenner kept trying to gavel the hearing to a close, but Democrats again pointed to the rules, which said they had a certain amount of time to examine their witnesses. When they refused to stop the proceedings, the chairman did something unprecedented: He simply picked up his gavel and walked out.
“He was like a kid at the playground,” the staffer says. And just in case anyone missed the point, Sensenbrenner shut off the lights and cut the microphones on his way out of the room.