Partisan Tensions Stemming From Jan. 6 Roil House Functionality
Things are so bad it’s begun to trickle down to staff members, who used to be able to forge compromises between their bosses, said Jonathan Bydlak, director of the Governance Program at R Street Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research organization. He said lawmakers largely view the other party as a monolith: Democrats are socialists who want to defund the police, while Republicans are racists who believe the 2020 election was stolen.
“In the past, I think there were more good faith efforts to try to pass legislation in a bipartisan way,” Bydlak said. “Now the presumption, because of the viewing of the other side as the ‘other,’ is that it’s a waste of time and it’s not necessary.”
