I've always thought that the Obama's insistence on bipartisanship is baloney.
The Republicans are not going to have any part of it, and the attempt to try and win concessions from them on key policy initiatives, from fiscal stimulus to health care reform, will produce fatal flaws.
The Republicans do not want government to work well for the middle class because they fear that then the middle class will be converted to a pro-government activism, and that will ruin them as a party.
This column by Paul Krugman about the dangers of doing too little to avert another depression is the most important warning Obama will get. If we try to compromise with Republicans on health care reform we will wind up with an expensive mess that gives us few controls for stopping the spiral of wasteful spending.
The Republicans do not wish us well. They are captive to a right-wing ideology that, faced with what's going on now, will take us off the cliff. The rank and file Republican still feels we did the right thing on Katrina; New Orleans got what it deserved.
And if we go off a cliff in this recession, the Republicans will then blame us and the media will give them equal time and the public may blame us too..
The challenge for Obama is not to win bipartisanship; it is to use this crisis to alter the fundamental categories of American politics, especially the politics of division that have bedeviled us for decades, divisions rooted race, in blaming government for everything, and using abortion, gender politcs, and war to distract us from our true problems here at home.
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