Our system is a two party system. The deadlock in Minnesota politics, reflected in Washington, is the ultimate product of the Christian Right bringing religion into the work of the political process. They have imagined themselves as the only ones with morality, which demonizes anyone who disagrees with them. Their hectoring pal Ann Coulter has actually called the Democratic Party Demonic in her new book of that title (Available by the pound at Costco). In the strident world of Who Yells Hardest is the Most Passionate and therefor the Most Right, the strident passionate arguments of these well-meaning folk is that if they are voting from their faith, that means anyone who disagrees with them is Satan. They have gone from Right (conservative) to Righteous (religiously motivated and informed) to Self-Righteous (We are the Christian Soldiers, marching as to war). And the self-righteous are famously hard of hearing.
This batch of Republicans in Minnesota was elected on the promise of No Compromise, which is like saying "We will not participate in a Democracy. Compromise is wrong and Bad, and in fact is a sin." Former Republican Governor Arne Carleson, a good Republican in my book (like Durenburger, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and Lincoln) has tried to lead by example by going out into Center Field with Mondale and a few others who grew up believing in an American system based on Inclusion, not self-righteousness. You are not in a conversation if you are not open to hearing what is being said to you, and open to being changed by what you hear. The opposite of a conversation is Hectoring.
A one-party system is called Fascism, or Communism. As long as the Republicans act like the Supreme Soviet, nothing will happen. And, in the words of David Books of the New York Times, they will prove they are not fit to govern.
