Give partisanship a chance!

Ah, bipartisanship. It seems like such a good concept. Who can object to legislators setting aside petty differences and working together to find common ground on issues facing our nation?

Unfortunately, as Matthew Yglesias points out in an opinion piece for the LA Times today, "bipartisanship" means something entirely different when politicians use the word. Roughly translated, it means "the other side stops its silly whining and agrees to everything I have to say." According to Republicans, only Democrats need to start acting in a bipartisan manner; Democrats feel the same way about Republicans.

The most egregious offenders these days are Washington elites who are pressing for a "bipartisan" solution on Iraq, when they really mean liberals shutting up about the senselessness of the war (never let the truth stand in the way of a "bipartisan" effort). The administration trots out some phony claims of progress on the ground in Iraq (claims we have heard countless times over the past five years), and all of the sudden we are supposed to forget all that has transpired since the invasion and "give the surge a chance to work." Once the surge fails (and it will, because playing whack-a-mole with the insurgents does not solve the larger issues facing the country), the administration will trot out a new "strategy" and demand that we put aside "partisanship" and give the new strategy a chance.

We blundered into this war on a bipartisan basis, and if it takes partisanship to get us out of it, then I'm all for it. It's time to pull the plug on this disastrous military adventure.

DC wants you to sit down and shut up on Iraq