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Congress in a word |
There are so many failures by Congress in the last few years that one needs a scoreboard to keep the record straight. According to Kathleen Hennessey on TheDay.com, “Not even Congress is big on Congress.” She says the body has developed “low self-esteem” because of its “dysfunction, occasionally impaired judgment, and inability to get things done. Let me add two more: incompetence driven by a fanatical ideology, the latter label assigned to the GOP.
Less than 10 percent of the public approves of the job they are doing. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado , said, "I guess we can take some comfort that Fidel Castro is at 5 percent." Comparing Congress to a communist regime probably doesn’t amuse many conservatives, and is certainly no excuse for the complete ineffectiveness of our lawmakers. But they have reasons not to worry come 2012, unless, the voting public decides to punish these neer do wells.
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Current partisan Congress |
The WSJ says even with Congress’ approval tanked, and with voters exclaiming they hate their bipartisanship these same voters reelect again, while punishing those who dare to cross party lines. It’s time for you people to put up or shut up. But it all comes down to the redistricting process that draws the lines that place particular voters in certain districts. J Gerald Hebert of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center says political leaders can choose their voters, rather than the other way around.
This has worked comfortably for California which, in the last 212 elections, has seen only one case where the party changed hands. The sunshine State tried to break this hold on the redistricting process, as have other states. Arizona voted for a separate commission to draw districts some time ago, but when this assembly did its job recently, fake Gov. Jan Brewer fired the Independent member of the council because the new maps were not more favorable to Republicans.
It is core partisanship that reelects these inept politicians, and there isn’t a lot of hope the extreme right or left will change radically. Sometime I wonder if these people even bother following the news, or maybe they just aren’t playing with a full deck. Either way, it is up to progressives to bring out the vote that could not only oust a bungling Congress, it could also get rid of most of the GOP in Washington that is responsible for this insane ideology on absolutely no taxes.
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LBJ and Dirksen |
http://www.theday.com/article/20111125/NWS13/311259926/-1/today