Guess the author:
“Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.
“If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this ‘compromise’ of being ‘obstructionist.'”
Could it be Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, decrying the cost and questionable content of the “stimulus”? Is it Rush Limbaugh, firing up his “dittoheads”?
Nope. It’s Barack Obama, from The Audacity of Hope (hat tip, The Corner.)
Political expediency is the harshest of mistresses.
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Wow. That’s heavy!
I swear. I am putting a bumper sticker on my car that says, “I pay my own damn mortgage (and probably some of yours)”
Lee: Uncanny, eh? I left this part out, and now wish I’d put it in:
“For the minority party in such circumstances, ‘bipartisanship’ comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist.'”
Now ‘seester, that’s just the kind of rancor we’re putting behind us. You mustn’t be bitter at conducting yourself as a responsible adult and getting shafted for it. Rather, you must be thankful that you are in a position to help those who, unlike you, have not won life’s lottery.
Malcontent. 🙂
I kind of feel like a rube for not buying twice the house I could have, thanks to your^H^H^H^H Obama’s generosity
Lea and I built our current house in 2000. I believe it is accurate to say that it is neither cramped nor luxurious. If it were a car, it would be a midline Honda Accord, dig? Quoting our loan officer: “Y’all want to buy a bunch more house?” We politely declined. She had qualified us for almost four times what we ultimately borrowed.