WaPo says the âDebate on Response to Katrina Creates Partisan Divideâ?.
Ya think? I donât agree. That partisan divide predates Katrina by a lot. What it is doing, though, is underscoring how hurtful our two-party system is to our country and citizens. Everybody’s so busy protecting their political turf with rhetoric and propaganda, Americans are turning their backs on one another now.
According to a poll this month for the Hotline political newsletter, which asked whether Congress should tackle Iraq or the Katrina recovery first in 2006, Americans wanted the Gulf Coast rebuilt by 58 percent to 28 percent.
Democratic and independent voters generally agreed on addressing Katrina’s problems, while self-identified Republicans chose Iraq, 46 percent to 37 percent.
How nice. According to Douglas Brinkley (a Tulane presidential historian):
Bush’s decision “to keep Katrina under the radar screen” and “dribble out aid” is driven by a fear of overseeing a costly foreign war and a massive domestic initiative simultaneously, Brinkley said, just as Vietnam and the Great Society program consumed the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
I suppose itâs possible that Bush just canât keep up with this many massive problems, but Iâm more inclined to think heâs just happier working on the issue his Republican base supports. MUCH easier to tick off people who didnât vote for you, hunh?
Then youâve got the Democrats with their incurably toxic approach to politics: divide and conquer:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lumped Congress’s slow rebuilding response into an attack on a Republican “culture of corruption and cronyism, coverup . . . and incompetence,” which she later said “caused so much more loss of life and damage in the Gulf Coast.”
Just at the moment, Iâd be hard-put to pick which party is more rife with corruption, cronyism, and incompetence. Those pathetic qualities are rampant on both sides of the political divide, and the total focus on blame and finger-pointing is just as destructive as Bush’s “dribble-out aid” approach.
Worst of all, I think everybody is tired, now, of the political posturing and worn-out party-lines.
“I think the country has moved beyond Katrina at this point,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), former House GOP campaign head and now chairman of the House investigation of the response.
Lovely thought indeed, for those hundreds of thousands all along the Gulf Coast.
If, as the article says, the Democrats are the mommy party and the Republicans are the daddy, then I, as a child, would like to move for emancipation. Iâm sick of them both.
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