It’s not often that I fisk an entire article but this one was so blatant it deserved a response.
Frank: Partisanship is out of control in Congress
Even the title is laughable. Other than Nancy Pelosi, I can’t think of anyone in Congress who is as arrogant, belittling, as drunk on their own power or as partisan as Barney Frank!
At a book signing at the University of Massachusetts, Frank commented on Evan Bayh’s retirement announcement:
“I don’t understand how you make things better from the outside. I share the frustration, but I would have hoped he would have stayed around and voted to change the filibuster rule,” Frank said.
Really? You can’t think of one way that it would be better to be on the outside than on the inside? Other than the obvious point that Frank being out would definitely lower the partisanship, how about if you were a Representative who actually had a conscience, a Representative who did not think driving the country into an inescapable black hole of debt? What if you thought that the far left of your party had become so partisan that they had severed themselves from all sense of reality? What if you were tired of being counted amongst those who were responsible for the destruction of the United States? What if you thought that your party leadership were part of the problem? What if you actually paid attention to your constituents and heard the anger, frustration and concern? If you were that person, wouldn’t you think that going to your constituents with a clean slate and removing your personal desires from the equation might be a good thing?
But partisanship was a theme to which he returned again and again, saying he believes a clear shift began under Republican Newt Gingrich’s tenure as House speaker in the second half of the 1990s.
Before that, he said, Democrats and Republicans could disagree but remain cordial and work toward compromise. Now, though, the pressure to please the party’s base to win primary elections has spawned a Congress in which the sides are “very ideologically differentiated,” he said.
“Compromise” has been a word that means we continually slide to the left. On days that Republicans are called “ideologues,” we slide just a bit to the left. On days that Republicans cosponsor legislation with Democrats, we run wildly to the left. While there may be some legitimate argument that the United States has moved left socially, moving left fiscally means a complete disregard for basic economics.
We are now “very ideologically differentiated” because fiscally, we are at a dire point. The Left wants to abandon any fiscal discipline of any kind. They want to spend with the belief that examples of economic stagnation of Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union’s economy were a result of not having people who were enlightened enough to create money out of thin air as the current Left believes they can. The Right, whether they actually believe it or it is now fashionable, want to stop the country from committing financial Harri Kari. The reason that people like Frank see this as partisanship is that the Left is incapable of seeing any issue in the terms of black and white or right and wrong. The core of the Left ideology is that everybody’s opinion is as valid as the next person. There is no right or wrong, just opinions. This thinking leaves them claiming that all issues should be negotiated and compromised. I don’t think anyone with a correct brain would believe that what Hitler did to the Jews was able to be compromised about. What the Left is looking to do the US financially has the potential to have consequences every bit as horrific.
Frank goes on to blame the partisanship in the electorate on where people choose to get their information:
He believes that’s also evident in the electorate, in which the most ardent liberals and conservatives are getting their news from such different sources that they often seem to be discussing completely different topics.
“People are almost in a parallel universe. They are not getting a common set of facts and most of the people they talk to are those who agree with them,” Frank said.
Barney, Barney, Barney, facts, by their very definition are, well, facts. There can not be more than one set of facts in a situation. “Barney says” is not fact. While it may (highly unlikely) contain facts, it is not all fact.
If Barney wants to complain about us getting information from the people we know who we agree with, perhaps Barney should look at the legislative process. If Barney listened to his own words, he would be much more open to opposing health care reform, shrinking or disbanding FREDDIE and FANNIE and avoiding additional spending of any kind!
Barney Frank is the worst kind of hypocrite. Not only does he not see his own failings, he actually views his failings as being the answer to the problem he sees as existing.
Much as been made of President Obama’s ego and his apparent lack of appreciation for reality. President Obama is Aristotle to Frank’s Peter Pan when it comes to living in reality. Who knows, with the election of Scott Brown, anything now seems possible!
