re: #71 Obdicut

I agree that Republicans will now not vote for health care no matter what. But the reasons are political at this point - they smell the kill and they aren’t going to let the other guys off the hook.

Pelosi and Reid had no problem being obstructionists and many see that as how they got to power. For example, they had no intention of having Bush get any form of Social Security reform done. He saw that as the issue he was going to spend his political capital on after re-election and they managed to kill it and make Bush own its death and used the issue to peel off parts of his constituency.

And then there is the whole “but our obstructionism isn’t really obstructionism because the people want our obstructionism” argument, as was made by Media Matters back in 2005.

I am not endorsing any of this - just coming to accept it as the new, standard political behavior as political discourse disintegrates in this country.

Anyways, Republicans (which used to call themselves “the party of ideas”) are going to croiss their arms and be obstructionists and then say “Nancy did it first” when called on it. the behavior won’t change. Nor will it if Democrats go into the minority anytime soon.

As long as the primary medium of American politics is the Internut, and as long as the Internut user values speedy answers to accurate ones, this will continue and get worse. Sad to say and I hate being a pessimist, but i see no way out until people become more skilled consumers of electronic information.