The Smithian

…In fact, they did the exact opposite when the Republican administration does the exact same thing that is now at the center of the Obama scandal involving the Associated Press—that is, seizing phone records of reporters. (Please note: The issue here isn’t whether they are right or wrong. What I’m talking about is the utter hypocrisy of the G.O.P. on this matter.) Let’s take the most important disclosure of a classified program that occurred in my lifetime: the 2005 article in The New York Times that revealed the existence of the program to allow the government to wiretap Americans and others in the United States without a warrant if it was part of a national-security investigation. Somehow, I don’t remember Republicans banging the First Amendment drum when that story came out— instead, they were calling for reporters to be charged with treason, which could have led to them being executed.

bold, ours. more, here.

While less devastating than turning the program into a capped block grant to the states, which the House Republicans have previously endorsed, the cut is nearly five times the reduction approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate Agriculture Committee, which already is too much. The House bill’s cuts would end food-stamp assistance for nearly two million people, with the pain falling mainly on low-income working families with kids and older Americans…

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…Combine the extreme partisanship with a series of politically motivated redrawings of Congressional district lines over the past few decades and you get two political parties who are largely preaching to their own base—with almost zero political motivation to do anything else. The ends of the political spectrum grow more populated, the middle less so. And nothing gets done—and people lose faith that government can do anything.

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No Democrat has beaten a single Republican in an election race that was about the Congressional process. It doesn’t cost Republicans politically, nor does it change it the incentives to obstruction. Nor can Democrats point to any of their legislation they enacted into law by essentially school marming the Republicans into good behavior. Democrats have been trying this for years and have nothing to show for it at the ballot box or in terms of legislative victories or nominations. So what’s the point? Why keep doing it? Democrats have to change the incentives for Republicans. That is the only way to defeat obstruction. That is the only way to defeat Republicans in committee, on the legislative floor, and at the ballot box. To make opposition costly.

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Actually, by “those” I mean Republicans, and by “the Obama administration” I mean Hillary Clinton. The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016.

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So…the Republicans are trying to legislate that science away.

 That cynicism is coupled with a deepening partisan divide.