I ♥ Polarization

The editors at the Washington Post, in top handringing form, lament the recent trend toward "partisanship and paralysis" and wonder if there is a way to "carve out some space for those who strive to work across party lines in the national interest?" Which makes Mona Charen at the National Review wonder in return where those budding sculptors at the Post were hiding just a short while ago.

This call to a high-minded spirit of compromise was utterly absent in the winter of 2009, when it seemed that the Democrats would carry all before them. When newly inaugurated Barack Obama airily spurned Republicans who objected to aspects of the stimulus bill with the reply “I won,” the Post did not pull its chin about the problem of polarization. Nor did the great stewards of bipartisanship turn a hair when Speaker Pelosi declared, during the health-care debate, that “a bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes.”

Finally, at long last, the Republicans (some of them, anyway) realize this country is charging full speed toward the abyss. Liberals like those at the Post, terrifed at the prospect of their cherished doctrines in jeopardy, now suggest in the spirit of compromise our run off the cliff be slowed to a stately and respectable promenade.