Middle-of-the-roaders and people who don't pay a lot of attention to politics have made such a fetish out of bipartisanship that the most partisan political hacks in D.C. will go on and on about "unity" and "working with the other side" even as they lustily plant toe kicks to the other side's groins at every opportunity. To the moderates, this makes little sense. Why can't both sides get together, buy the world a Coke, teach them to sing in perfect harmony, and keep it company....la, la, la, la!
In theory, that seems to make sense, but in practice, it generally works about as well as Obama's efforts at stopping the oil spill in the Gulf. Why is that? Let me explain.
1) Trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. There was a time, perhaps 50 years ago, when the ideological gulf between the Democrats and Republicans wasn't very large. That's no longer the case. The far-Left took over the Democratic Party in the late sixties and Reagan's tremendous success in the eighties moved the GOP to the right. So today, we have one party that primarily represents people who are ideologically committed to low taxes, small government, deregulation, traditional values, and capitalism while the other party is controlled by people who believe in high taxes, big government, ever-increasing regulation, hedonism, and socialism. It's like one side has brought the ingredients for a chicken pot pie and the other side is back from the supermarket ready to make a chocolate cake. Then people say, "Gee, why don't both of you get together and make one dish out of all that?" How can that work? Not only does each side disagree with their opponents, they believe their "solutions" will damage the country.
2) If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made! "Bipartisanship" in D.C. primarily consists of saying you want bipartisanship while trying to cut the other side's throat, inviting the other side to vote for your proposal after making superficial changes to it or trying to get one or two people from the other side to go along with you for show. None of those approaches constitutes "bipartisanship" in any meaningful sense. In fact, the difference between what's considered to be hamfisted partisanship and "bipartisanship" is so small in D.C. these days that it's basically a distinction without a difference.
