the ultimate reality show is the ongoing carnival that is American politics. The age of the permanent campaign is now upon us. Perpetual conflict is the rule, rather than the exception, and the effect is to paralyze the mechanism of government so that nothing of substance gets done.
Politicians are more interested in building their brands than doing the people's business. They bloviate and pontificate while engaging in combat with their ideological foes who they tend to speak of as if they are evil incarnate.
Congress was once a collegial institution in which the interests of the citizenry trumped partisan sniping But somewhere along the line, the political became personal, and the country has been the worse for it
I trace the genesis of the current incivility to the midterm elections of 1994, when the GOP took control of the House under the banner of Newt Gingrich and his famous Contract With America.
Speaker Gingrich was a career backbencher who was a bomb thrower by nature, and he began the transformation of the Republican caucus into rabid culture warriors who were the drivers of the Whitewater investigation that eventually morphed into the Clinton impeachment debacle.
That was followed by the 2000 election in which the SCOTUS essentially decided the election by stopping the process in it's tracks and essentially awarding the race to the Republican, George W Bush.
The two notable takeaways from that race was first: that the assertions made by the SCOTUS in Bush v Gore were not to be considered a precedent, which is judge speak for admitting that the court had their thumb on the scales of justice
in this instance and second: Mr Gore's elegant concession to Gov Bush in an acknowledgement that, to continue litigating the matter would not be in the interests of the American people.
After that we saw the emergence of the Tea Party, which begat the Freedom Caucus, a proliferation of Conspiracy theorists, grifters, and insurrectionists that have seized control of the Republican Party.
Speaker Gingrich was a career backbencher who was a bomb thrower by nature, and he began the transformation of the Republican caucus into rabid culture warriors who were the drivers of the Whitewater investigation that eventually morphed into the Clinton impeachment debacle.
That was followed by the 2000 election in which the SCOTUS essentially decided the election by stopping the process in it's tracks and essentially awarding the race to the Republican, George W Bush.
The two notable takeaways from that race was first: that the assertions made by the SCOTUS in Bush v Gore were not to be considered a precedent, which is judge speak for admitting that the court had their thumb on the scales of justice
in this instance and second: Mr Gore's elegant concession to Gov Bush in an acknowledgement that, to continue litigating the matter would not be in the interests of the American people.
After that we saw the emergence of the Tea Party, which begat the Freedom Caucus, a proliferation of Conspiracy theorists, grifters, and insurrectionists that have seized control of the Republican Party.
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