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In The Guardian today, Michael Tomasky takes on the premise of a "post-partisan" Bloomberg boomlet. He says some old, retired senators, aghast at the state of their beloved institution, can't plausibly argue that blame for policies over the last seven years must be shared equally in order to hoist a unity banner this year.
"But they horribly misdiagnose the current problem of partisan gridlock. Their approach assumes that America is in this condition because 'both sides' are equally culpable. This is nonsense. Republicans and conservatives are responsible for about 80 percent of the problem.
Only one side tried to politicize 9/11. On one side scheduled a war vote for a month before an election. Only one side ran a television ad that visually equated a man who left three limbs in Vietnam with Saddam Hussein. Only one side impeached a president over oral sex. Only once in American history has a sitting Senate party leadership personally gone into the home state of the other party and campaigned against him: Republican Bill Frist, in 2004, against Tom Daschle."
