Counter-Point

And here’s Karl Rove’s take from his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Since January, Democrats have rejected bipartisanship and incremental reform in favor of a countrywide makeover via party-line votes—despite ending the election with only a five-seat margin in the House and a 50-50 Senate. They seemed to think Americans would welcome whatever expensive, wacky legislation Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden offered.

But now Democratic leaders are realizing they not only lack a mandate for their revolution; they don’t have the votes to pass the controversial measures with nice-sounding names they’ve offered. On most of these bills, Mr. Schumer can’t get 50 ayes (allowing Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie) required to pass this legislation, let alone the 60 votes (including 10 Republicans) needed to begin debating them.

As Democratic leaders awaken to that reality, they seem to be going bonkers. Mr. Schumer is now promising to force votes on motions to proceed on the Democrats’ H.R.1 bill for a federal takeover of elections, as he did on the Democrats’ Jan. 6 commission, even though he doesn’t have 60 votes. He hopes Republican use of the filibuster will increase pressure on all Democrats to abolish it. In turn, this would create enormous pressure on every congressional Democrat to go along with leadership’s radical agenda, no matter how obnoxious parts of it are to them.

I present that not as true but to illustrate how Republicans may be seeing things.

My own view is that the leadership of both parties is now lacking in basic political skills that facilitate bi-partisan agreement. That is to be expected: they’ve gotten where they are through seniority—being re-elected again and again, mostly from safe seats, frequently in states which have mostly safe seats for a generation. They can’t help themselves. Every bill submitted is full of overreaches, signaling, and poisoned pills. Furthermore over the last several decades, at least in the House Democratic caucus, increased power has been vested in the Speaker and the Speaker has been disinclined to accept amendments from the floor. That’s not a formula for bi-partisan agreement. But it’s a relic of another day—when Democrats held 60% or even 70% of House seats. Those days are gone, replaced by narrow majoritarianism.