The One-Party Government Continues to Build

When things look their bleakest, politically speaking, I always take comfort in the knowledge that at some point the pendulum will have to swing back (a la the 50's to the 60's). But what happens if the Republicans manage to stop the pendulum from ever moving again? What if they throw up enough roadblocks and barriers to make sure that they are never out of power? Well then, my friends, we and our children (barring a nuclear holocaust) are in for some real trouble. Here's just another example of the GOP throwing a wrench in the machine:

In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.

Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.

The Republican's play politics with everything. Plain and simple. I'm not saying the Dems don't politicize things to further their agendas, because they do, but they never lose sight of the ball. If the Democratic Party were really concerned with politics and not the actual issues, well, then they would actually have been able to wage a decent campaign. But they are relatively principled, as seen here:

That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."