Politics Can Be So Depressing

ABC OTUS News reports that Wisconsin Congressman and GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan said the following at a campaign rally in Virginia.

Remember the line, we're not red states, we're not blue states but we're the United States of America? I want to be a uniter, not a divider? I tell ya, I've served with three presidents since I have been in Congress, this is the most partisan atmosphere I have ever seen. This is not uniting, this is dividing.

In these comments Ryan clearly hopes to tap into the revulsion most persuadable voters have for extreme partisanship. Although he doesn't say it directly, he clearly suggests that this hyper-partisan atmosphere is Barack Obama's doing.

It has become almost a cliche to refer to statements that are not only false, but which actually state the exact opposite of the truth as Orwellian, after George Orwell's portrayal of "doublethink" in the novel 1984. One source defines Orwells doublethink as "a thought process in which ideas that are obviously self-contradictory are accepted as true based on the fact that an authority figure is asserting them."

By that definition, Ryan is a truly Orwellian figure. The run-up to his selection as Vice-President has seen a GOP nominating and primary process in which the party he represents consistently weeds out any candidate who dares to voice the apostasy of bipartisanship. Consider this description of a GOP retreat that occurred shortly before Obama's inauguration.

The Republican strategy, from even before Obama was inaugurated, was to oppose him in lockstep. . . . Grunwald describes a retreat the House Republican leadership took in January 2008, before Obama was inaugurated. The second slide in the presentation read “The purpose of the Minority is to become the Majority.” Pete Sessions, the Texas Republican giving the presentation, added, “This is the entire Conference’s mission."

Not long after this meeting, Senate GOP Minority leader proudly announced that "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Long-serving and reliably conservative GOP Senators, such as Indiana's Richard Lugar and Utah's Robert Bennett were defeated in GOP primaries because they were perceived to have betrayed the party by occasionally working with Democratic colleagues. Richard Mourdock announced on friendly turf--Fox and Friends--"I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view." See the doublethink? For Mourdock, bipartisanship is pure partisan uniformity. Ryan laments the loss of bipartisanship while working feverishly with his party to destroy it.

George Orwell would find the current client quite familiar.