More on the bipartisan fallacy

Steve Benen rounds up many other examples of Republicans rejecting their own principles when Democrats embrace them. And did you know that McCain-Palin had an entire campaign web-page in praise of cap-and-trade?

Responding to an earlier post here, Steve Benen has more on
Republican shenanigans on cap-and-trade - I hadn’t known that cap-and-trade was an explicit part of the McCain-Palin platform in 2008 - and examples from many other fields. Benen’s headline sums up the problem:

NEGOTIATING WITH THOSE
WHO OPPOSE THEIR OWN PRINCIPLES

Why is it that advocates of bipartisanship such as David Broder seem never to criticize this tactic, and just keep complaining that the Democrats are failing to be bipartisan as long as Repubicans bloc-vote against their own ideas when Democrats embrace them?

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

2 thoughts on “More on the bipartisan fallacy”

  1. "cap-and-trade was an explicit part of the McCain-Palin platform in 2008"

    Yeah, but that was two years ago. A lot has happened since then (Michael Jackson died, Spirit rover is stuck on Mars, Lakers won a NBA championship, my brother-in-law purchased a new pair of shoes).

    So it's understandable that Republicans might have changed their views.

    As for David Broder, his embrace of bipartisanship is purely a math fetish, or rather, a math-phobia. He's extremely disturbed by bimodal distributions.

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