Bipartisanship Ends Before the Session Begins

The Democrats who made lots of promises about bipartisanship and cooperation upon winning both houses of Congress, have instead made plans to ram their agenda through without input from the GOP, or even allowing the GOP to participate:

As they prepare to take control of Congress this week and face up to campaign pledges to restore bipartisanship and openness, Democrats are planning to largely sideline Republicans from the first burst of lawmaking.

House Democrats intend to pass a raft of popular measures as part of their well-publicized plan for the first 100 hours. They include tightening ethics rules for lawmakers, raising the minimum wage, allowing more research on stem cells and cutting interest rates on student loans.

But instead of allowing Republicans to fully participate in deliberations, as promised after the Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats now say they will use House rules to prevent the opposition from offering alternative measures, assuring speedy passage of the bills and allowing their party to trumpet early victories.

Ah, but there's one Republican the Dems can't sideline, and that's President Bush. The question is will Bush decide that cooperation with the Dems is more important than GOP principles and sign their legislation regardless of principles? The president hasn't shown a lot of enthusiasm for his veto power (he's only used it once), and my fear is that he'll just get along and go along and effectively give the White House to the Dems as well.