Bipartisanship At Last?

You'd think it would be impossible to find anything Bernie Sanders and Jim DeMint could agree on. But they're both on the same page when it comes to the Obama/GOP tax cuts.

OK, when I say 'same page' I really mean opposite pages... Sanders threatens filibuster because he morally opposes tax cuts for the rich. DeMint threatens filibuster because he morally opposes not throwing in a complimentary blow job for every billionaire as tax rates are slashed to zero for the rest of time. But even so, seeing a self-described democratic socialist reach across to a right-wing nutbag to try and derail a truly insane bill is an encouraging sign. Particularly when 'moderate' pols on both sides haven't agreed on a damn thing for at least two years.

Maybe, ironically, we no longer need to look to 'moderates' for moderate policy - we need to look to the fringes for a steadying hand. We need to look to crazy f*cks like Jim DeMint and real progressives like Sanders who've been left behind by the Dem's mass swerve to the right to say "hey, hold on..." As the 'moderates' go full-speed ahead destroying the country, maybe some real governance could be accomplished by bringing in the wide receivers.

I've wondered for a while now if our last hope would be for the Tea Partiers and the progressives to work together - at least tactically. Sounds insane I know... But there's so much obvious sh*t that every American, left or right, could agree on that needs desperately to be addressed. And 'Baggers and liberals really do share some common ground in principle - even if a million other things they don't agree on hold them apart.

Like I got a phone-back recently from a regional Tea Party leader (who shall remain nameless to spare his blushes). I'd emailed him to say good job on opposing Boehner's plan to disband the Congressional Ethics Committee and speaking up for a body that was the brain child of... gulp... Nancy Pelosi. So he called me back and admitted, yes, there's a lot of sh*t we could both agree on - number one being that our country is getting f*cked by cynical politicians and irresponsible big business. We covered a lot of ground and we confessed a few things that our liberal and conservative buddies probably wouldn't want said aloud... He committed conservative heresy by admitting Reagan is overrated and that Carter is unfairly demonized, he expressed frustration that conservatives are forever preoccupied with wedge issues when, in reality, WTF does abortion and gay sex have to do with government? On corporate ethics, on healthcare, on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on special interests screwing our democracy, on domestic spying, on freedom of speech, on DADT... hell, even on the legalization of weed, as Tea Bagger and liberal, we both agreed on the problems... if not the solutions.

This talk was encouraging. It actually gave me hope that at least some 'Baggers are rational and perhaps an unholy tactical alliance, a partial synthesis of opposites, could work as a way of getting the country back on track. Think of it as a push from both sides to pop that big, ugly boil of legislative inertia and self-interest in Washington.