Monday, February 02, 2009

Is bipartisanship a bad thing?

In his opening day lament about the lack of bipartisanship in the state Senate, Republican leader Phil Berger of Rockingham County took note of Democrats' failure to support rules proposal opening up operations of the Senate, though he praised Gov. Bev Perdue and Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton for their efforts to "reach across the aisle." He also voted that Senate Republicans would reach out to Perdue and Dalton "to seek new, innovative and bipartisan solutions to the problems facing our state."

I blogged on a part of his remarks last week, including his using "Democrat" as an adjective, which drew some heat from some commenters. That didn't surprise me.

What did surprise me were several e-mails that took issue with the whole notion of bipartisanship as a good thing. One of my regular correspondents, who doesn't like seeing his name in print, sent along a link to an article from "American Thinker" entitled "Why Bipartisanship is Unethical."

Among other things, the writer, Larrey Anderson, believes this: "Depending on the circumstances, "bipartisanship" is almost always a sign of either A) political weakness or (B) moral turpitude.

"In either case, bipartisanship is almost never ethical."

Here's a link to the article:

Another e-mailer from Western North Carolina had this to say:

"I do not want bipartisan at all and I am sick of trying to reach across the isle and getting my hand slapped and surely the others are just as tired unless they like the crumbs off the table of the emperor Basnight and the queen of gambling Perdue. Heck I do not want democratic, democrats, or republicans but just plain old Americans that stand tall for right."

Who knew bipartisanship was so dadgum unpopular?

Also, for those who missed it, here's what Berger said about bipartisanship, in a news release his office sent out Wednesday:

Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) made the following statement:
“Now is the time for a bipartisan effort to remake North Carolina’s government from the ground up.
Democrat Senator Marc Basnight’s speech, accepting his nomination to an eighth term as President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina Senate, shows he is aware of the litany of problems facing North Carolina’s citizens.
“The Democrats did not support any of the Senate Republican’s good government proposals to reform and open the operation of the Senate. Unfortunately, this failure indicates a continuation of past practices in which Democrat leaders dictate the operations of an extremely partisan Senate from behind closed doors. Senate Democrats still refuse to accept the lessons to be learned from the embarrassing tenure of Democrat Speaker of the House Jim Black; those lessons include a need for open debate and transparency in management of the state’s business.
“Senate Republicans are encouraged by the efforts of Governor Perdue and Lieutenant Governor Dalton to reach across the aisle. Senate Republicans will reach out to Governor Perdue and Lieutenant Governor Dalton to seek new, innovative, and bipartisan solutions to the problems facing our state. It is our hope that the Senate Democrats will heed Barack Obama’s call in his inaugural address to end, ‘…the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.’”

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love how the Obscurer erases comments it doesn't like. This morning there were quite a few against these hard-headed, dung-kicking Southern DirtyDems, and now, in true keeping with Obamunist tactics, they vanish! Can you just hear them...my daddy was a Democrat, my granddaddy was a Democrat, my great-granddaddy was a Democrat, so dadgummit, I am a Democrat!! LOVE the thought process.

Anonymous said...

Follow-up - never mind about the vanishing comments. I see there is a link to them up above. Still I've witnessed this paper doing that often. Free speech as long as you agree. Just like the DirtyDems in NC - shutting down GOP reps' comments in a debate, closing meetings before they can speak, refusing to put them onto the agenda. IT'S NOT NEWS that Southerners do not like new ideas or anything that disagrees with them. They get points for civility but are the most thick-skulled creatures on this earth. Just like PiggyDems actually - NOT OPEN-MINDED AT ALL. They love to shout you down and refuse to listen. They only yammer on with emotion-laden vitriol. Hypocritical PIGS.

Joel Raupe said...

Jack, I'd love Non-Partisanship, frankly, especially when the Partys both hide behind their official status as "private institutions" when it suits them but essentially force the taxpayers to finance their candidate selection and pick not only their voters, through naked gerrymandering, but also their opponents through election fiddling. (It's barely a year before the filing opens for the 2010 election.

The Democrats in Senator Basnight's Senate believe the definition of "Bipartisanship" is, "be reasonable. Do it our way." They then exclude duly elected representatives of their districts for no other reason than their Party label, from every part of the actual process. Self-Maintenance is their primary reason for being, and I believe they really don't see this. They are Democrats first and state Senators second.

Anonymous said...

Just for the record. "Democrat Party" is grammatically correct.

While I may disagree with the Republicans argument that "Democrat Party" is a compound noun.

"Democrat" undoubtedly functions as an attributive noun or noun adjunct modifying the noun "Party".

Anonymous said...

I guess Joel Raupe likes to forget that it was the first Bush Administration by way of the Dept of Justice and the Republican-controlled NC Supreme Court that has forced the redrawing of legislative districts several times in the state's recent history. He just finds is easier to cast a phrase like "essentially force the taxpayers to finance their candidate selection and pick not only their voters, through naked gerrymandering, but also their opponents through election fiddling" at one party without examing the history of the other.

Indeed, didn't former Court of Appeals Judge Doug "DWI" McCullough, himself dumped by voters last fall, urge partisan support for Justice Edmunds on the Supreme Court for just such "partisan fiddling" to continue.

That would be a "yes"

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