Sunday, June 21, 2009

Democrats thought bipartisanship was good when Bush was in power, but it is a trap now

From PajamasMedia:
Peter Wehner writes that the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr. “has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of bipartisanship in the Age of Obama. It is a trap that Democrats can easily fall into and be snared by, so E.J. has decided to use his column to warn of its evils. In his column yesterday, for example, he wrote this:”

Where did we get the idea that the only good health care bill is a bipartisan bill? Is bipartisanship more important than whether a proposal is practical and effective?… Trying to achieve full bipartisanship by squaring those two views [held by Democrats and Republicans] is a recipe for incoherence…


Of course, as Wehner notes, prior to 2009, Dionne was writing passages such as this:

if the president were genuinely interested in a bipartisan compromise, he would put everything on the table – including his own tax cuts that have added to the budget deficit. (The Washington Post, 2/4/05)

Not to mention:

If ‘getting over’ the divisive and troubling endgame of the [2000] election is supposed to be in the national interest, doesn’t the president have an obligation to help? Is it unfair to insist that he pursue a more moderate course? (The Washington Post, 1/28/01)

1 comment:

Steel Phoenix said...

Yeah, funny how this works; Republicans thought it was a trap when Bush was in power, and now they think it is a good idea.