Bipartisanship

Anyone who pooh-poohed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) politically courageous decision to work with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to help craft bipartisan climate legislation might reconsider his position after this news out of South Carolina:
The Charleston County Republican Party’s executive committee took the unusual step Monday night of censuring U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for stepping across [...]

That other Maine Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, released a statement this morning commending the decision of her Maine colleague to cross the aisle yesterday in support of the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill.
Due, in large measure, to the efforts of Senator Olympia Snowe, who has worked tirelessly, the legislation passed by the Senate Finance [...]

Following up on Dave’s post, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the Republican point-man on Senate health reform legislation this year, says he’s still interested in forging a bipartisan health reform deal — so long as the bill can win an overwhelming majority in the upper chamber.
“Something as big and important as health care legislation should have [...]

Senate Democrats negotiating health care reforms with Sen. Charles Grassley are finding out the hard way that, while boasting a reputation for reaching across the aisle, he appears hard set on supporting GOP leadership above bipartisan compromise.

So implies Congressional Quarterly, which reported today that the Obama administration is leaning toward a strategy of basing its “bipartisanship” determination on GOP amendments to the health bill, rather than the number of GOP votes the proposal ultimately wins.
[P]rivately, White House officials said the administration is moving closer to advancing the overhaul under a congressional [...]

Here’s a cheater’s guide to the president’s odes to bipartisanship:
I understand that when the last administration asked this Congress to provide assistance for struggling banks, Democrats and Republicans alike were infuriated by the mismanagement and results that followed.  So were the American taxpayers.  So was I.

The Republican National Committee chairman judges the speech at 9:30 p.m. on the dot:
After last year’s State of the Union, then-candidate Barack Obama asked the nation to imagine a time when a President’s agenda would draw standing ovations from both sides of the aisle. That sort of bipartisanship is an admirable goal – and one [...]

It’s clear now: When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to a podium just before 3 p.m. yesterday to announce a bicameral deal on the $789 billion stimulus package, the details of the legislation were murky at best.

RedState.com uses scare quotes to refer to the “bipartisanship” that would result if merely two Republicans vote for the stimulus package. True: if only two of the Senate’s 40 voting Republicans support the stimulus (Sen. Judd Gregg, who Obama has nominated for commerce secretary, is recusing himself), it would mean only five percent of the [...]

The Connecticut independent’s support for the Iraq war and his tireless campaigning for McCain made a lot of enemies in his former party. But when Democrats are close to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, bygones will be bygones.