A question

[avevale_intelligencer]

bedlamhouse mentioned in another connection:

"- the (bipartisan) Department of Homeland Security.
- the (bipartisan) Patriot Act
- the (bipartisan) invasion of Afghanistan
- the (bipartisan) invasion of Iraq"

I don't know exactly how the voting went, but from what I do know about the state of Congress certainly leading up to the last midterms, would I be right in thinking that calling them "bipartisan" basically amounts to:

MOMMY: "All right, Tommy, whose idea was it to kick the ball through the window?"

TOMMY (age five): ".......mine." (Pointing at three-year-old baby sister) "But she din't stop me, so that makes it her fault too!"

I'm sure some Democrats voted for these things. I'm equally sure no Democrat originated them. I'm open to correction, though, hence the question.

Comments

[howeird]

There's more to partisan politics than party, as you probably know. The same way not all Protestants back the same ideologies, neither do all Democrats. Thanks to some baggage from the Civil War, most former slave state southerners will not vote Republican, so even today many of the most conservative members of Congress are southern Democrats. They would rather be dead than take campaign money from the party which put Lincoln in office. Seriously. But they vote with the Republicans.

With 435 people in the House and 100 in the Senate, there are almost always votes across party lines one way or the other, so unless a vote is unanimous it is probably bi-partisan.

There's another definition of bi-partisan, though. Every bill has at least one sponsor, most have more co-sponsors. If there are people from both parties listed as sponsors, it's a bi-partisan bill.