-by Patrick Toomey
Just as a stopped clock is correct twice a day, James Carville was 100% correct in that famous quote. If only the nominal leader of the party that nominally stands between us and incipient fascism would take that advice to heart.
As this site recently noted, things are a little chaotic with the GOP these days. Under those circumstances, it should be incumbent upon the donkey to do everything it can to make that bad situation worse. It sure as hell ISN’T time to actively seek “bipartisanship” with the party of J-6, QAnon, and the scariest group of senatorial nominees that any party has ever tried to inflict upon this republic.
Unfortunately, an old dog in the White House is up to old tricks now:
President Joe Biden, after returning this week to a politically reshaped Washington, will join top Republican officials to herald his infrastructure law as he seeks out bipartisan cooperation in a new era of divided government.
Wednesday’s event in Kentucky, which will include Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is meant to underscore the importance of the massive public works package Biden signed into law in 2021. The area, across the Ohio state line from Cincinnati, is home to the Brent Spence Bridge– long an illustration of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure that is due to receive funding from the law for repairs.
For Biden, however, perhaps more important than the law itself will be the show of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats as he looks ahead to a contentious second half of his term and the likely start of a reelection bid.
Apparently, this delusion is widely shared in the West Wing:
Yet at Biden’s direction, White House officials have quietly engaged in early stage preparations for the new reality on Capitol Hill, homing in on two key groups as they search for issues that can draw bipartisan support: moderate Republicans with a proven track record of working across the aisle and the incoming class of freshmen Republicans who flipped districts Biden won two years earlier.
Looking for moderate Republicans in the incoming Congress is like looking for life in Jurassic-period fossils. In the Year of Our Lord 2023/Year of our Reagan 43, moderate Republicans are either in the grave, in a retirement home, or in a lobbying firm. In recent Congresses, actual, real-live moderate GOP members could’ve comfortably fit in a decent-sized minibus. Now, I’m not sure that they could fill a mid-sized car. The last few remnants like Fred Upton and Peter Meijer are gone.
Biden’s version of bipartisanship, even in more moderate times, was often found wanting. In particular, those of us who were of age when he chaired the Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991 still painfully recall how he allowed 3 GOP colleagues (Simpson, Hatch, and Specter) to steamroll Prof. Anita Hill, thereby allowing the Thomas nomination to squeak by at 52-48. In the ensuing decades, Thomas provided the critical 5th vote in such decisions as Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and D.C. v. Heller (gun control). His wife was engaged in some interesting activities after the 2020 election.
More recently, Mitch McConnell (who is prominently attending Biden’s Kentucky event this week) made up a new “rule” out of whole cloth and sat on Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS nomination in 2016. McConnell decreed that the Obama/Biden Administration didn’t have the authority to fill a vacancy that arose in the final year of their term. The first time that McConnell had the chance to do so, he openly abrogated that “rule” when an opening arose in 2020. When Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, it was too late to fill his seat that year, but, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, there was plenty of time to fill her seat. At the National Prayer Breakfast last February, Biden called the creator of this blatant double standard “a man of honor.”
Last June, five justices voted to overturn the Roe/Casey line of cases in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Thomas was 1 of them. Gorsuch (who filled the seat for which Garland never got a hearing) and Coney Barrett (who filled the Ginsberg seat) were 2 others. That’s 3/5 of the Dobbs majority, if you’re keeping score at home. GOP senators steamrolling and outmaneuvering Democratic senators played a critical role in overturning of 49 years of precedents upholding a constitutional right to abortion.
Looking at the broader sweep of the past 4 decades, bipartisanship brought us such wonderful things as the Patriot Act, the Iraq War Resolution, and most recently, an $857 billion military budget. The Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act— both highly touted by the donkey— were passed on party-line votes. The GOP-controlled House gave us regular Benghazi hearings during Biden’s second term as vice president. It will bring us regular hearings about Hunter Biden and his laptop during the next 2 years of his current presidential term.
When I initially heard that Biden was going to pursue “bipartisanship” the next 2 years, I hoped that it was a story from The Onion. Sadly, it is a straight news story. Hopefully, that story will not prove to be good news for the presidential hopes of Ron DeSantis.