Bipartisan Sensibleness

Today I'm going to start a series of posts outlining the prospects for an incipient political movement! A movement that represents the best hope for this nation, but a movement that as yet is so underdeveloped that it doesn't have a name! Until now! I am dubbing this movement "Bipartisan Sensibleness." I hope it catches on!

While I have recently noted already some hopeful signs of Bipartisan Sensibleness in both parties, sadly there doesn't seem much hope for Bipartisan Sensibleness in Washington at the moment! The signs of hope that I have seen on the Republican side are in the states, and the signs of hope on the Democratic side are in lobbying firms! So I suppose that there is hope for Bipartisan Sensibleness in Washington if a Republican governor gets elected President or if K-street lobbying firms somehow manage to gain a foothold within the Democratic party! But neither of these things will happen until 2016, at least!

So how can we find a path towards Bipartisan Sensibleness here and now? Towards popular policies that are currently being blocked by special interests and partisanship? Bipartisan Sensible policies like:

• imposing painful sacrifices for beneficiaries of programs such as Social Security and Medicare, balanced by temporary token tax increases on the wealthy;
• enacting a compromise on health care reform, such as repealing only half of Obamacare;
• admitting that climate change is real, while agreeing not to do anything about it; 
• maintaining abortion rights for women, while extending them to men as well;
• increasing support for student loans, as the Democrats want, but targeting it towards shady for-profit institutions, as the Republicans want;
• striking a deal in which Republicans promise to suspend efforts to suppress voting by minorities and the poor, in exchange for a Democratic promise not to propose policies that would make minorities and the poor want to vote for them.

To build a stronger nation, we need to start with a shovel-full of Bipartisan Sensibleness! In the weeks and months to come, I will be outlining ways that we can start shoveling towards Bipartisan Sensibleness now!