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Bipartisanship is overrated. Good policy is not. If good legislation that I personally support passes, I don't sit around five years down the road and think about How terrible it was because only one party voted for it or because some senator got their feelings hurt or hurt somebody else's. I'm just glad it passed.
Think back.
In all of Congress, no Republican voted for Bill Clinton's deficit reduction plan. Not one. And that was extremely successful. It played a role in record job creation, strong economic growth and a balanced budget. Why would anybody care if no Republican voted for it around 15 years later? You know what I would have cared about though? If Bill Clinton watered that bill down, got Republicans to vote for it and it led to sluggish job creation and economic growth and the budget was never balanced.
I'd like it if everybody could get along and both parties could work together and pass meaningful legislation that works all the time. That would be nice. But the ideological gulf is so huge that it's not possible. Bipartisanship sounds good, but it's largely a fairytale. It's not good for the country to bridge an ideological gulf when it hurts our country. I'd rather have good policy from one party than bad policy from both.
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