I’m normally the last person who would advocate voting straight down a ballot along party lines, but that may very well be what has to be done if there is any hope of making legislative progress in Washington.
If people (those of us who do not inhabit the odd world that is inside the Washington Beltway) want something done in Washington: it’s all or nothing: House, Senate, and the White House. If you want any tangible political progress, you have to have all three branches of government run by the same party (and yes, I’m completely ignoring the Senate filibuster rules that throw it all down the drain, anyway).
All or nothing should be an unsettling thought for people of all parties. It doen’t matter if you’re a republican, democrat or somewhere in between: both sides shudder at the thought of the other being in total power. Currently, however, only the big-money lobbyists have hope of ever getting the Dems and Reps to agree on something, and usually the legislation that comes out of that sort of situation is bollocks and only slightly modest in its level of catered corruption… so what other choice do average, everyday people have?
Think about it: even if Mitt Romney wins and the Republican Party keeps the House… the Senate will not allow any of the more “strong republican” laws that they want to pass through. Mitt Romney won’t be a rubber stamp for the republican party, because the democrats in the senate won’t allow any of that sort of legislation through to his desk. If the republicans said from Obama’s inauguration day that their goal was to make Obama a one-term president… why should anyone think differently about democrats if the only place in which they hold a majority, or even a filibustering minority is in the Senate? I’d like to think long-time democrats in the senate would not be as bad as the republicans have been when it comes to filibusters, but given how much they disagree with the policies in the republican platform… there’s no reason for us NOT to think that everything would stall on the floor of the Senate.
Sadly, we seem to have a all or nothing impasse in Washington. Checks and balances was a good idea, but it just doesn’t work.
So what, we have democrats run everything for 4 years, then vote them all out and have republicans run for 4 years so that they undo everything the democrats did, then 4 years later start the cycle all over again? What’s the solution?
Hell if I know.
Moreover, it’s really bothersome that people blame or credit only the President for getting or not getting something done. They can’t do it on their own, and now they can’t do anything on their own. Voting for Mitt Romney or voting for Barack Obama isn’t going to solve anything. Romney won’t magically kill Obamacare because the Senate won’t let him. Obama won’t make Obamacare better because the House won’t let him. Same with taxes and abortion bans: if you don’t run all three you have an impasse because the differences between the two major partys have gotten so severe.
It’s hopeless. The only way anything will ever get done given the ever-growing social gap between the two major parties is if aliens (from another planet) land and we suddenly realize that maybe all these fights are a but juvenile and completely pointless.
But it does seem as though, if you want something done in Washington, the only way to do it is by having one party control the House, the Senate, and the White House… even if that was my party, I still find that unsettling because that’s not how American democracy is supposed to work.
Which leave the great US of A where, exactly?
