I think I might be delving into the realm of Rich Elfers a bit but I have to make my feelings heard on this subject.

The Democrats, now and in times past, have tried to position themselves as the party of bipartisanship and I used to think that that was more or less true.

I have reassessed my opinion in lieu of recent events in Congress. Here’s why: With the Republican takeover with the slim majority that they enjoy, and a few hard right members that held up Kevin McCarthy’s hopes for the speakership, the Democrats in Congress could have easily thwarted their efforts for an inordinate amount of power over said speaker by making a deal with McCarthy before the first vote was taken.

To insure his election as speaker, the Democrats, rather than staging an entirely symbolic unanimous vote for their party leader, could have made a deal with McCarthy themselves, which would have been an astounding example of bipartisanship and could have set such a tone for the entire session.

Instead, we now have a speaker who is beholding to the extremists, whose only agenda is revenge for the way Trump was treated, even though the committee that investigated Trump was totally right to do so, evidenced by the fact that two Republicans jeopardized their careers by participating on that committee.

While I’m not sure McCarthy would have agreed to this because he was a strong supporter of Trump himself, I think it would have been worth the effort by the Democrats, and if it failed, they could have publicized the fact that they had tried.

This could have easily insured a retaking of the House in 2024. Unfortunately, the Republicans have become the party of “no” and he may have rather been beholding to his own parties extreme wing than any form of bipartisanship with Democrats.

While I am not a supporter of middle of the road politics and consider myself more of a progressive (think Bernie Sanders), I would certainly prefer middle of the road over burn the other party to the ground, which is where the Republican party seems to be heading. Just sayin’.

Larry Benson

Enumcalw