Posted by olvlzl.
After Bill Clinton became president and in the run up to that first mid-term election I seem to recall that “divided government” suddenly attained the status of the perfect state of being. Cokie Roberts rhapsodized it endlessly on her Monday morning blather sessions. The voters, it was asserted, wanted to have Republicans in control of the legislative branch as a means of preventing that most horrible of all possible worlds, a one-Democratic-party government.
The Republicans, under Newt Gingrich won that election and took over the legislative branch and immediately redoubled the frenzied effort to remove Bill Clinton from office. I don’t recall any of the DC based media from wondering if the voters, who not only elected but re-elected him, might not have wanted him to remain in office as a check on Gingrich and other Republicans.
Then when the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the presidency and the Republicans retained control of the legislative branch the phrase “divided-government” seemed to fall into a state of desuetude. Suddenly the oft cited wisdom of the voters, c. 1992, seemed to attain the status of an abandoned school of agronomics under Stalin. It might be mentioned by those behind the times, but it wouldn’t be acknowledged. Not any more than the fact that Bush had been handed the presidency by five Republican members of the Supreme Court.
Now that the Republicans have lost the legislative branch at the polls, rather decisively, you might expect that Cokie Roberts and the rest of the Washington based media would revive their original wisdom and, once again, let the term “divided government” be heard continuously. But that doesn’t appear to be true. Despite the Voters voting for a decisive change from Republican domination, a clear repudiation of their programs and procedures, the call of the Washington Press Whores is for the Democrats to kiss and make up. Democrats are supposed to give those who the voters have rejected those who have so disastrously botched it, an equal share in setting policy and making law.
How many decades of hypocrisy does it take for someone to lose their place in the corporate media? And why is it not acceptable to call them on it? Why are Democrats still donating to NPR?