In my column today at The Week, I wonder if we can finally dispense with the ritual in which presidential candidates say that they can bring Republicans and Democrats together to solve problems:
So imagine if a candidate in the general election, or a president in his inaugural speech, said, "This is my program. I realize that the folks in the other party don't like it. There may be a few places where we can compromise, and if so, that would be terrific. But I'm going to treat the voters like adults and tell them that I'm not expecting a whole lot of cooperation. I'm going to fight for what I promised to do when I ran, and if you don't like the results, you can turn me out in four years."
That would at least be honest, and nobody would be disappointed when the result is partisan fighting.
And at the Plum Line, I gave three reasons why the administration and Republicans in Congress will work out a budget deal. Here's the last one:
The single most important priority for congressional Republicans right now is to get a Republican president elected in 2016. If they can do that, it'll be like walking into the public policy version of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, where rivers of delicious tax cuts flow and everlasting gobstoppers of environmental deregulation are waiting to be sucked on until everyone passes out on a cotton-candy bed of abortion restrictions. So they don't want to do anything to screw that up, and a government shutdown fight late this year would demonstrate once again that Republicans can't be trusted to govern.