Saturday, December 24, 2005
GOP Hitting Limits of Aggressive Tactics
Forget about being bipartisan, it's time for Democrats to stick together.
By Ronald Brownstein - Times Staff Writer
Democrats have had to exert great effort to contest conservative priorities, and were unable to highlight any of their own.
"This is still the Republican era and they are still in total control of the choices," Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek said. "What we've seen are the difficulties of concerted action on [the GOP] agenda, but you don't see any alternative agenda."
In the budget debate, for instance, the question was how much to cut spending on Medicaid — not whether to expand it, as many Democrats prefer, to cover more of the increasing number of Americans without health insurance.
Yet Republicans remain stymied on many fronts by their inability to attract the defections among moderate Senate Democrats that the White House expected after Bush's reelection last year. That problem largely doomed Bush's top domestic priority this year: restructuring Social Security.
"There's a recognition in the Democratic caucus that the only way we are going to compete … is if we stick together," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
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Forget about being bipartisan, it's time for Democrats to stick together.
By Ronald Brownstein - Times Staff Writer
Democrats have had to exert great effort to contest conservative priorities, and were unable to highlight any of their own.
"This is still the Republican era and they are still in total control of the choices," Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek said. "What we've seen are the difficulties of concerted action on [the GOP] agenda, but you don't see any alternative agenda."
In the budget debate, for instance, the question was how much to cut spending on Medicaid — not whether to expand it, as many Democrats prefer, to cover more of the increasing number of Americans without health insurance.
Yet Republicans remain stymied on many fronts by their inability to attract the defections among moderate Senate Democrats that the White House expected after Bush's reelection last year. That problem largely doomed Bush's top domestic priority this year: restructuring Social Security.
"There's a recognition in the Democratic caucus that the only way we are going to compete … is if we stick together," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
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