On tribal politics

Politics have become so tribal that anyone who works with the other side is viewed by many partisans as a traitor, akin to sleeping with the enemy--Norman Ornstein.

Imagine, dear reader, a Tip O'Neil/Ronald Reagan style handshake in Washington. What the business owners and investors in this country wouldn't do to see that. After all, stability is the single most important ingredient in economic recovery. Unfortunately, however, the GOP is holding stability hostage thanks to the compromise-is-a-dirty-word set.

News flash: when a party moves blindly away from its ideology in order to practice pure obstructionism, it's called tribal politics. Need an example? Let's start with healthcare reform.

2006:  The individual mandate is the Republican answer to health care reform, the construct of a conservative think tank (The Heritage Foundation) and widely approved by conservatives as one of their own (Romney) leads the charge to enact it in the great state of Massachusetts.

 2009: The individual mandate is SOCIALISM!

Where were all the SOCIALISM! screamers before Obama took office? Why weren't they righteously decrying Medicare and Social Security over the years?

Because tribal politics, dear reader, do not adhere to an ideology. The only goal is self-preservation. And although I have no idea what the November end game is going to look like, tribal politics do not seem to be doing Mr. Romney any favors.

In order to lead the tribe into the November battle, Romney was forced to change his positions on abortion, gun control and health care reform--and those are just the obvious ones. Then this week, while President Obama sprang to action condemning the deadly attack on our Libyan embassy and sending security troops to points across the Middle East to protect American interests, Romney promptly started calling the President names and doubling down, making his latest patriotic casualty the unspoken agreement that partisanship ends at the water's edge.

Tribe before country, folks. Always.

(psssst ... hey GOP, you got your ears on? I hate to break this to you fellas, but your relentless attacks on Obama and his policies are starting to backfire. Obama looks more and more like an underdog scrapper against your monolithic party-of-no legislative stance and a stalwart statesman when bullets start to fly. Your man Romney, on the other hand, is looking more and more like a spineless YesMan brown-nosing his monied brethren.)

Oh to be a fly on the office wall of Karl Rove. Oh to hear the insider discussions between the Koch brothers and their minions. Because the real question, dear reader, has to do with the beloved free market. After all, at some point the rate of return on those beauteous donations courtesy of Citizens United might start looking pretty bleak. Don't believe me? At post time, Intrade Odds--which tracks the bettin' man's money--favored Obama's reelection over Romney's chances of taking the White House by more than 30 percent.

Backed into a corner, however, these guys can get pretty desperate. The Kansas GOP tribe even tried scrubbing Obama's name from the Kansas November ballot over more spavined racist birther claims.

Well, well, well. Talk about your American way.

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