Republicans are claiming that they want bipartisanship and unity on the COVID package without proposing anything, and Democrats aren’t falling for it.
Greg Sargent of The Washington Post noted that Democrats have seen this game before:
What’s the Republican plan? There isn’t one. With whom are Democrats supposed to negotiate? Over what, exactly? Let’s go out on a limb and suggest that Republicans would like to keep things this way for as long as possible. They want the public debate to unfold in a place where they get to refrain from saying what they’re for — that is, refrain from saying what they’re prepared to concede to Democrats — while simultaneously attacking Democrats for not being willing to concede enough to them.
….
The insight that voters will judge Democrats by the scale of what they deliver on, and not on whether they achieve bipartisan cooperation for its own sake, suggests Democrats have learned the lessons of 2009 and 2010.
Senate Republicans want to obstruct and slow down the economic recovery for as long as possible. They scream about bipartisanship and unity but never propose anything. It is impossible to have a negotiation if one side refuses to say what they want and spends all of their time objecting to the other side’s proposal.
The Senate Republicans are pulling from the same playbook that they used against President Obama, but this isn’t 2009 anymore. Democrats know how this game works, so they aren’t going to waste time trying to build bipartisan bridges that Mitch McConnell will burn down.
It is the same con.
The Republican Party has no ideas. Four years of Trump’s agendaless presidency and watch Republicans in Congress abandon any pretense of governing confirmed that the GOP as a party is only capable of one answer, and that is no.
Democrats have learned their lesson, and when the economy is even better than when Trump was president, it will be Biden and his party reaping the political rewards, while Republicans get left out in the cold.
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Mr. Easley is the founder/managing editor, who is White House Press Pool, and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
