Fight Club Politics

[erpowers]

Has anyone at DU read the book "Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives"? I am asking because I have been reading the book and think it is a partisan attack at the Democratic Party sold as an explanations of why politics is so partisan in the House of Representatives. I just wanted to know if anyone else had read the book and had gotten the same impression.

The reason for my impression is that throughout the part of the book that I have read it seems that the author keeps blaming the Democratic Party for the way things are now. The authors keeps saying things like the Republicans may have made things worse, but the Democrats started this. In addition, it seems that the author points out mean things the Democrats may have done, but either does not point out the mean things Republicans may have done, or allows the Republican to explain why they did what they did. For instance, the author points out that on one occasions a Democratic Representative called a Republican Representative a "wimp". Later, in order to get back at the Democrats, that Republican kicked all the Democrats out of a Congressional Library. The author than points out that the Republican later apologize tearfully and said the reason he had kicked the Democrats out of the library is that they were taking up space that was reserved for Republicans. The author does not give any explaination for why the Democrat may have called the Republican a wimp.

It seems that the author does this throughout the section I have read. On another occasions the author states that Democrats called supporters of Newt Gringrich "Nazis and Hitler supporters". However, the author never examined the times Republicans did the same to Democrats. Things like that happen throughout the section I have read. It seems like the author is trying to make the Republicans out to be a group of people who just lashed out at Democrats after they had been treated so poorly by the Democrats. It seems that the author ignores other people who claim things got much worse after the Republicans gained control of the House.