Politics is a slimy, messy business; but our efforts to clean up the disgusting fluids in DC have led us here; as that disgusting mess was the oil in the gears of our system. Seniority, choice committee spots, earmarks, big donors to the Party...that's how people with opposing agendas were able to work together. To use a different metaphor, the favor trading and Party apparatus and policy wonks acting as the guardians of Party conformity and back room deals were the tools politicians used to get things done, and those we haven't blunted, we've taken away. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but we've left the major parties without many incentives to work together and not much in the way of consequences for not working together. This is why the Tea Party was just able to breeze into the GOP, and the Democrats are vulnerable to the same type of disease (to switch metaphors yet again).
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
