Loyal Opposition

Did you know the House of Representatives managed to pass a bi-partisan healtcare bill? No, serious! They did. They had members of both parties vote in favor of it, and managed to pass the damn thing!

Well, they had one Republican lawmaker vote in favor, and passed it by two votes.

If that's not seat-of-your-pants governance, I'm not sure what is. And it sure as hell isn't bi-partisan.

I'm not 100% sure who's fault it is this bill isn't more of a consensus. It's easy to blame one side (the Democrats are railroaded the minority party) or the other (the GOP is refusing to play ball on principle). Really, it doesn't matter who's fault it is. 'cause

The big contentious deal with this bill (as I saw it...correct me if you see it differently, please) was the public option. I understand that. I respect that.

It's totally legitimate for conservative lawmakers from both parties to say, "Nuh uh, no way. That's totally unacceptable for a whole bunch of reasons, and if you have it in the bill I'm not voting."

The next logical step is the introduction of a bill or two that are viable alternatives. And sorry: "viable alternative" doesn't mean "ideologically opposite" which is how it's been taken to mean in the last ten years or so. If you make your answering bill too far away from the original, negotiation is pointless...and I believe the GOP lawmakers know this when they introduce bills. The idea of loyal opposition is just lost on lawmakers these days.

Loyal opposition: "applied to the opposition parties in the legislature to indicate that the non-governing parties may oppose the actions of the sitting cabinet ... while maintaining loyalty to the source of the government's power."

While the idea was initially used to allow the minority parties in the British parliament to disagree with the majority party without being accused of treason, it can be applied in a slightly different manner now. While the Republicans cannot currently push their own agenda as effectively as they like (there are penalties for losing elections), they should be staying loyal to the concept of effective governance.

That's what both sides are forgetting about, that they have a job to do. It's all well and good to stand by principles...but we have problems to solve, people, and being pig headed isn't helping anyone.