Why is Bipartisanship Dead? (posted by DT)

So the Health Care Reform bill is now behind us, barring an unlikely bit of judicial activism from the Supreme Court. One more post-mortem (maybe not the last- there's a lot rattling around in my brain):

Can serious people please dispense with the "Obama hasn't delivered on his bipartisanship promise" and even the "pox on both your houses" argument about why Democrats and Republicans can't get along in Washington? I get why Republican politicians put out that spin, but it would be nice if the rest of the media would leave Fox News pundits alone and stop repeating their talking points.

What do you mean, DT? The Dems passed a Health Care Reform bill without a single Republican vote? What could be more partisan? True enough, but we have to look with some depth at the facts of the policy before we slice up the Blame Pie for this. The HCR bill is a moderate bill; it's nearly identical to the Massachusetts bill that was passed with the enthusiastic support of Mitt Romney, with the help of Scott Brown's affirmative vote. (When Brown was asked about this in the recent Senatorial campaign he said he opposed Obamacare not because it was different from the MA bill, but because MA already has a good system and he didn't want to subsidize other states doing it). Olympia Snowe voted in favor of almost exactly the same bill in committee. The individual mandate, which Republicans are now calling unconstitutional, has been in numerous past Health Care plans proposed by them. HCR ended up much closer to past Republican plans than liberals wanted- there's no single payor, there's no public option, there's no socialization of anything- if you look at the actual bill, it's just not that radical.

So what happened? The Republican leadership made a decision to refuse any compromise whatsoever. They decided that if the Dems want it, then we'll oppose it. Democrats reportedly offered during the negotiations to put in Malpractice Reform, a provision that conservatives have been agitating for, but when they asked Republicans they were reportedly told that they wanted it, but still would have to vote against the full bill. So there's an idea that liberals have no big problem with, but which results in loss of support of trial lawyers. Democrats were willing to forgo that support to gain some Republicans, but found it wouldn't deliver any votes!

So I know I'm a partisan; I plead guilty there. But let's face it; in this case Republicans have decided to fight instead of compromise. Maybe there will be change on future issues (banking reform? Can't wait for that one), but the blame for partisanship in HCR has to be put on the GOP.