DAVIS: Advice to Obama: Revive 'Gang of 14'... or more

I agree with the article's premise and the democrats should consider and incorporate republican goals as representative of the population. But we are dealing with a variation of the prisoner’s dilemma. While the republicans were in power the democrats were treated poorly. Now that the democrats are in power it is time for retribution and the democrats cannot expect the republicans to be more compromising in the future when the republicans return to power. It is therefore, unfortunately, illogical for the democrats to be compromising; the rational choice is to ram through as much partisan legislation as possible.

tardiz: eye-for-eye meets chicken and egg. when the republicans controlled congress, i strongly felt that the democrats were acting in a very repugnant manner. however, i'm young enough to not remember (or not have cared enough to pay attention) to the clinton presidency, which gave rise to the republican majority. now, i get to see just how repugnant the republican minority will be-- as well as how pragmatic the democrat majority will be. i suspect that, at the end of the day, i'll have a very similar viewpoint of both parties. unfortunately, i further suspect that i'll hold neither one of them in especially high esteem. that said, i'm hoping for a pleasant surprise. barack obama has been pleasantly surprising for this mccain backer so far, so i'm not throwing out hope just yet.

While Republicans did not filibuster liberal nominees like Ginsburg, who was nominated by Clinton, Democrats routinely filibustered Bush nominees who were "unacceptably conservative". This is because Republicans did not consider political ideology as a qualifying or disqualifying attribute - unlike Democrats. So of course now that Democrats are in control, it is time to put partisanship behind us and let Democrats nominate and confirm whomeever they want. I say we should have about 7 years of Republicans blocking "unacceptably liberal" nominees. Then it will be time for another gang to come along.