Glancing at the Wall Street Journal and then at the Hill Newspaper, it's hard to believe some people in Congress are professional career politicians...or maybe it isn't. Maybe it's just the difference between bipartisanship and buypartisanship.
Here's the front page of the Wall Street Journal today on the national consensus against our current lobbyist-written, job-killing, wage-cutting trade policies:
"By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president...In a March 2007 WSJ/NBC poll, before recent scandals involving tainted imports, 54% of Democratic voters said free-trade agreements have hurt the U.S., compared with 21% who said they have helped...While rank-and-file Democrats have long blasted the impact of trade on American jobs, slipping support among Republicans represents a fresh warning sign for free-market conservatives."
Now here's the Hill Newspaper trumpeting a speech by Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to an assembled group of corporate lobbyists last night:
"House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday night that he was committed to building bipartisan support behind trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea that are dividing his caucus."
So to review - as polls continue to show bipartisan opposition to sellout trade deals among the general public, the Democratic House Majority Leader is working to build bipartisan support for sellout trade deals inside the U.S. Congress.
This is the difference between bipartisanship out in America, and "bipartisanship" inside the Washington Beltway. Out in America, it means consensus among citizens, in Washington it means consensus among lobbyists and the politicians those lobbyists buy. Call it Buypartisanship.
P.S. Stay tuned for my weekly nationally syndicated newspaper column out tomorrow on this topic and how it our government is now, rather viciously, trying to ram this buypartisanship down the throat of one of the oldest and most stable democracies in the Western Hemisphere.
Cross-posted from Working Assets