In Defense of Partisanship

Rep. Tom DeLay gave his farewell address to the House today, and in it gave a good defense of partisonship (h/t Hugh):

In preparing for today, I found that it is customary in speeches such as these to reminisce about the "good old days" of political harmony and across-the-aisle camaraderie, and to lament the bitter, divisive partisan rancor that supposedly now weakens our democracy.

I can't do that.

Because partisanship, Mr. Speaker - properly understood - is not a symptom of a democracy's weakness, but of its health and strength - especially from the perspective of a political conservative.

The point is: we disagree. On first principles, Mr. Speaker, we disagree.

And so we debate - often loudly, and often in vain - to convince our opponents and the American people of our point of view.

We debate here on the House floor. We debate in committees.

We debate on television, and on radio, and on the Internet, and in the newspapers. And then every two years, we have a HUGE debate... and then in November we see who won.

That is not rancor. That is democracy! You show me a nation without partisanship, and I'll show you a tyranny.

For all its faults, it is partisanship - based on core principles - that clarifies our debates, that prevents one party from straying too far from the mainstream, and that constantly refreshes our politics with new ideas and new leaders.

Indeed, whatever role partisanship may have played in my own retirement today - or in the unfriendliness heaped upon other leaders in other times, Republican and Democrat, however unjust - all we can say is that partisanship is the worst means of settling fundamental political differences... except for all the others.

But we must never forget that compromise and bipartisanship are means, not ends, and are properly employed only in the service of higher principles.

It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first-principle.

For true statesmen, Mr. Speaker, are not defined by what they compromise, but what they don't.

You can read the rest of the speech here.

The notion that we would ever want a Congress that was bipartisan and collegial all the time, the standard that some try to push, is nuts. We have strong ideas and principles, and they have something they think are ideas and principles, and it's only proper that we fight it out. DeLay was especially good at that, his "hammer" will be missed.