The Best Way To End "Partisan Gridlock" Is To Further Weaken The GOP -- Part Two
January 6, 2008 -- 9:18 AM EST // //
New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore has done us all an important service today, coming through with an article that lays bare just how morally and intellectually bankrupt Mike Bloomberg's call for an end to "partisan gridlock" really is.
Confessore got past all the silly platitudes about partisanship being the source of all our problems by asking what it is that Bloomberg actually stands for in terms of policy. This is what he found:
Hundreds of miles from the hustings of New Hampshire lurks a possible presidential candidate who supports gay marriage, abortion rights and stricter regulation of handguns. Who doesn’t mind taxing the rich on their income or big companies on their carbon emissions. Who says that deporting illegal immigrants would destroy the nation’s economy. And who is not necessarily averse to adding more bureaucrats to the government payroll.Mike Bloomberg, for all his complaints about the two parties, is in almost unanimous agreement with the policy goals and platform, broadly defined, of one party -- the Democrats. He is in almost unanimous disagreement with the policy goals of the other -- the GOP. The Dems represent majority opinion on a host of issues. The GOP doesn't. Broadly speaking, the main obstacle to the realization of multiple policy goals favored by the majority is the "partisan gridlock" being created by the GOP, which is using every parliamentary gimmick at its disposal to frustrate the legislative progress that the American people want.That politician — Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York — has spent months laying out his vision for a post-partisan approach to politics that would take the best from left and right.
Yet a close reading of the policies Mr. Bloomberg has promoted during his mayoralty suggests that Mr. Bloomberg actually has a lot in common with one party’s leading candidates — the Democrats — and not so much with the other’s. Indeed, on issues like gay marriage and gun control, Mr. Bloomberg stands well to the left of top-tier Democratic candidates like Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama.
Therefore, if Bloomberg were serious about ending "partisan gridlock" in the service of the very same policy goals he himself espouses, he would devote his efforts and fortune not to the equal demonization of both parties, but to the further weakening of the Republicans.
There's a lot more context here that needs explaining. For instance, Bloomberg's "post-partisanship" is as much a power-grabbing technique as it is a governmental approach. It was the device he needed to employ in order to ascend to the mayoralty in New York. And there are signs that he may try to use it again to gain the White House. But more on this another time.
For now, suffice it to say that Bloomberg's calls for "post-partisanship" are a self-serving, attention-seeking stunt. That's all there is to it.
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