One sided bipartisanship

by digby

Michael Tomasky does an interesting analysis of the congressional support for Bush vs Obama. He discusses a number of high profile votes and crunches the numbers, coming up with this:

Here’s how it all adds up:

Average Democratic Senate support for Bush: 45.5 percent.
Average Democratic House support for Bush: 36.8 percent.
Average combined Democratic support for Bush: 41.1 percent.
Average Republican Senate support for Obama: 8.8 percent.
Average Republican House support for Obama: 2.7 percent.
Average combined Republican support for Obama: 5.75 percent.

It’s fairly clear that the “both sides do it” trope is nonsense. And to my eyes, knowing the kind of centrist and right wing policies the president has proposed, it shows just how radical the Republicans have become.

However, judging from how the Villagers have interpreted this sort of result in the past rather than it being proof that the Republicans are mindlessly obstructionist, it proves that the country is “center-right.” The point isn’t that Republicans refuse to vote for a “liberal” president’s proposals, it’s that all those Democrats voted with President Bush. That’s how you “get things done in Washington.”

And they’re not entirely wrong, unfortunately. The fact is that in Washington the only things that are even contemplated in the first place are center-right or right wing policies and the only way to “get them done” is to let Republicans do them with Democratic help. Anything else is considered out of the mainstream, regardless of the substance.

Still, it’s good to see the numbers laid out so starkly. There can be no doubt of the imbalance. The only question is what it means.