I don't know. It's pretty hard to tell Republicans to not seek some revenge for what the Democrats did to them in recent years. Locking them out of important meetings and calling them Un-American Nazis was pretty much as bad as things can get. Now some want to demand Bi-Partisanship from the Republicans if they win in November? That's gonna be a pretty hard one to sell to many Americans. Some revenge is probably in order. It is what it is.
The ex-congressmen Porter and Skaggs, and others like me who see nothing but destruction of our entire Constitutional system of checks and balances simply want it to end. But since it really doesn't look like next year or the next few years will see an improvement, I will tell you how this ugly partisanship began and why it has finally collapsed.
Bill Clinton upsets George H.W. Bush in 1990, denying him a second term.
Republicans mount a campaign against Clinton (much like today's, same timeframe, similar economic issues), and Republicans gain majorities in both houses in 1992. In spite of an ongoing crusade by Republicans to "investigate" everything Clinton did, Clinton and Gingrich did manage to forge a compromise position on most of the major issues at the time, of course leaving a lot of the died-in-the-wool old school conservatives still pissed off that Clinton remained popular, even in spite of Monicagate which they had assumed would be the final nail in his coffin.
Enter George W. Bush in 2000 as the Republican candidate running against incumbent Vice President Al Gore, and the resulting USSC decision which awarded the presidency to Bush. There was understandably a LOT of animosity with regard to that action, so the partisanship really began heating up at that point. Democrats were angry; Republicans were defensive (and continue to this day to lambaste Al Gore at every opportunity).
By the time 2004 rolled around, George W. Bush's initial "compassionate conservative" promise had long since found its way to the wastebasket; there were anti-war people added to a lot of other non-Republicans who were never nuts about George W. Bush in the first place. Bush's approval rating had slipped badly by then, so the Republican strategy led by Karl Rove and certain monied 527 groups was to play dirty. They relentlessly attacked John Kerry; woo'd the Evangelical Christian base into believing that all Democrats were decadent and evil, and managed to eke out a win over Kerry for Bush's reelection. Which prompted even further anger on the part of Democrats.
When the 2008 campaign began to look like an easy win for Democrats, regardless who won the primaries, the Republicans by then were looking pretty bad to most voters, and so it was to be expected that they would not be in any mood to "welcome" a new Democrat to the White House, let alone a legislative super majority.
Since then, of course, the Republicans have let loose with any and all ammunition in their arsenal, including the most effective weapon of all which is the use of every negative piece of propaganda they can come up with in order to destroy Obama and the Democrats.
Now the question is will Democrats again turn on the Republicans if they win seats this November? Will congressional Republicans continue to filibuster and stall bills if they don't win a majority? Will Democrats filibuster and stall if Republicans
do win a majority? All for the sake of "revenge"??? Surely they would be justified because of the decades-old history of partisan conflict, but I will repeat--
to what end?
