As it is the dems are against everything as a block. When you take that position it just makes you look like obstructionists and takes away from the issues where you might have valid points. People stop listening.
Amen.
I watched that that same game played out... from 2009 to 2016.
Another example of the heart of the problem.
The system that saw Tip O'Neal and Ronald Regan share drinks after work no longer exists.
We've watched it erode steadily since the POTUS 42 admin. Credit
Newt Gingrich* for the change in American political tone... and the current atmosphere that you & I now both occupy.
This dysfunction isn't new, and it wasn't unpredictable.
I was a young man during the 42 Admin, when Newt was House Speaker. He was unvarnished in his political world-view. He was the guy who laid the groundwork for what we see on C-SPAN, nowadays.
I don't know if there is anything that can bring Am politics back to the RonTip dynamic. I'm afraid that ship has sailed- and sunk, somewhere over the horizon.
________________________
* from Wiki:
Role in political polarization
A number of scholars have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States, and hastening political polarization and partisan prejudice.[5][6][7][67][68][69][70][71][8][72][73][9] According to Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Gingrich's speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and health of American democracy. They argue that Gingrich instilled a "combative" approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States. Gingrich furthermore oversaw several major government shutdowns.[74][75][76][53]
University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason identified Gingrich's instructions to Republicans to use words such as "betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors" about Democrats as an example of a breach in social norms and exacerbation of partisan prejudice.[5] Gingrich is a key figure in the 2017 book The Polarizers by Colgate University political scientist Sam Rosenfeld about the American political system's shift to polarization and gridlock.[6] Rosenfeld describes Gingrich as follows, "For Gingrich, responsible party principles were paramount... From the outset, he viewed the congressional minority party's role in terms akin to those found in parliamentary systems, prioritizing drawing stark programmatic contrasts over engaging the majority party as junior participants in governance."[6]
Boston College political scientist David Hopkins writes that Gingrich helped to nationalize American politics in a way where Democratic politicians on the state and local level were increasingly tied to the national Democratic party and President Clinton. Hopkins notes that Gingrich's view[73]
directly contradicted the conventional wisdom of politics... that parties in a two-party system achieve increasing electoral success as they move closer to the ideological center... Gingrich and his allies believed that an organized effort to intensify the ideological contrast between the congressional parties would allow the Republicans to make electoral inroads in the South. They worked energetically to tie individual Democratic incumbents to the party's more liberal national leadership while simultaneously raising highly charged cultural issues in Congress, such as proposed constitutional amendments to allow prayer in public schools and to ban the burning of the American flag, on which conservative positions were widely popular – especially among southern voters.
Gingrich's view was however vindicated with the Republican Party's success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections, sometimes referred to as the "Gingrich Revolution."[73] Hopkins writes, "More than any speaker before or since, Gingrich had become both the strategic architect and public face of his party."[73] One consequence of the increasing nationalization of politics was that moderate Republican incumbents in blue states were left more vulnerable to electoral defeat.[73]
According to University of Texas political scientist Sean M. Theriault, Gingrich had a profound influence on other Republican lawmakers, in particular those who served with him in the House, as they adopted his obstructionist tactics.[7] A 2011 study by Theriault and Duke University political scientist David W. Rohde in the Journal of Politics found that "almost the entire growth in Senate party polarization since the early 1970s can be accounted for by Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978" when Gingrich was first elected to the House.[77]
