Word: partisanship
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Conservatism, as Russell Kirk defined it, is “negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.” With antics that emphasize shock value over substance and mindless partisanship over thoughtful consideration, these CRs reject the fundamental tenets of civil conservative thought...
...coming from the cerebral Roberts, the argument probably makes sense. The court, after all, wisely achieved unanimity in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school-desegregation decision that left no doubt about what the law should be. By contrast, the splintered ruling in Bush v. Gore suggested that partisanship rather than the law guided the court's resolution of the 2000 presidential election...
Kinsley is right to defend partisanship, but he misses the higher ground. In U.S. politics, the winner takes all, ideologues and hacks supplant statesmen, and reputation and access can be bought. One needs to look no further than lobbyist-lined K Street to understand...
Another name for the much derided "politics as usual" is democracy. Things get disagreeable because people disagree. Ideology is a good thing, not a bad one--and partisanship is at its worst when it is not about ideology. That's when it descends into trivia and slime. Ideology doesn't have to mean mindless intransigence or a refusal to accommodate new evidence or changing circumstances. It is just a framework of basic principles. A framework is more than just a list: all the pieces should fit together...
...Administration ready to do a deal? President Bush said that he wanted a deal sooner rather than later, and expressed impatience with the negotiators - not least, his own. And the Democratic leadership said it wanted to put partisanship behind it. But the Administration now needs to make a serious gesture...