Hands across the aisle!

That’s a sentiment I’ve seen expressed in lots of FB posts the past couple of days: Election’s over, now can everyone pleeease start working in a bipartisan fashion to solve America’s problems.
I don’t think so.
Oh, I think bipartisanship is definitely preferable to the Republican’s goal for the past four years (by their own admission to make Obama a one-term president [yeah, how’s that working out for you?]). Opposing someone because their policies are bad is very different from just opposing them period. But as this NYT piece shows, Repubs are as likely to conclude that they weren’t conservative enough, which probably won’t encourage them to start doing business with the Kenyan-born socialist Hitler wannabe who exists only in their heads. For instance, this guy, who proclaims the death of American liberty, triumph of Communism, triumph of Nazism, etc., etc. and his intention to never have a civil conversation with a Dem again (I particularly like his plan to start screaming spontaneously about food stamps when he’s in grocery stores).
Republican ideas of unity and bipartisanship are much the same as under Bush: Do what we say. Unite by agreeing with us on everything. Anything else? Divisive partisan bickering.
But beyond that, there’s a bigger problem: Some problems simply can’t be settled by compromise.
Conservative proposals that if we have the contraceptive mandate for insurers, anyone who objects can opt out are not a compromise. If people can opt out, there’s no mandate and women don’t get coverage.
Nor is the legality of contraception anything I’m willing to compromise on. Nor the rights of gays, or women. I’m not willing to compromise on Obama’s drone warfare program, torture or warrantless eavesdropping (wouldn’t do any good anyway, since the Republicans and Democrats are on the same page here).
Some things can be negotiated: Tax rates, tax cuts, budget expenditures. That doesn’t mean any given compromise is right or that a good compromise is possible or that it will put an issue to rest. Welfare reform in the 1990s was supposed to be the compromise that took welfare off the table as an issue. Instead, the right-wing goal posts shifted and just being too poor to pay income tax is a moral failing in Republican eyes.
At this point, we’re so far to the right of where I’d like us to be, any compromise is a bad idea, IMHO. So I think a happy era of bipartisanship is neither likely, nor necessarily desirable. If Congress is divided, they’re only reflecting ourselves.
In a couple of other election notes:
•Slacktivist concludes part of the religious right’s failure to do better on Tuesday (there were some glum predictions pre-election that Dems were totally underestimating their influence) is that they’ve lost a lot of credibility as the voice of morality. Not because of their own flaws but because the left wing, instead of arguing about secularism or the First Amendment, also argued back in a voice of morality: Making contraceptives easily available is the right thing to do. Fighting for gay marriage is a moral cause. For people who believe they have the lock on morality that’s impossible to grasp.
Case in point, Tony Perkins declares Tuesday’s marriage equality successes “a significant moment for the radical Left, which was helped to victory by the most pro-gay president in American history.” As Slacktivist puts it, “Perkins is still operating under the assumption that calling someone “pro-gay” implies a moral deficiency on that person’s part. Most people don’t agree.”
•And here’s a conservative Muslim explaining how the overwhelming Muslim support for Repubs in 2000 dwindled away.