WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- A clear sign that the Democrats and Republicans are acting like small children having real trouble sharing the little sandbox called Washington, is the new move by Senate Democrats to block all of President Bush's judicial nominees until he stops appointing unapproved nominees during congressional recesses.
This is just one of a series of indications that politics in the nation's capital are reaching levels of party-to-party hostility not seen since the height of the Clinton impeachment.
The difference is that even in the aftermath of failed Republican attempts to bring down the president of the United States in the 1990s, the businesses of legislation continued.
This may not be the case in the bloody aftermath of the 2004 elections. It certainly is not the case in the months leading up to the November vote.
Despite the tense animosity between both parties, "bipartisan" is a word that is spoken a lot around Washington these days. But it seems to have lost any real meaning.
If a bill in Congress sponsored by one party has the support of just a few members of the opposition, it is now the norm to label it "bipartisan."
In the strictest sense of the word, such measures are technically bipartisan.
But if opposition remains strong, is such legislation really bipartisan in nature? Does it warrant that tag simply because a small cadre of the opposition party's rank and file supports it?
"Bipartisan support" is the mantra of GOP leaders in the House and Senate looking to pass controversial legislation that generally reflects their party's agenda but only enjoys a paltry number of votes from across the aisle.
Senate Democrats have come to use the same term to describe some of the GOP leadership and White House-opposed measures they have repeatedly attempted to attach to Republican legislation brought before the body.
Those amendments have led the GOP leadership repeatedly to scuttle their own legislative priorities and must-pass legislation. So much for bipartisanship.
While amendments such as that of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to block Bush administration changes to the nation's overtime laws have been approved by the Senate in the past, can they really be called bipartisan if they stand no chance of gaining support beyond a few moderates across the aisle to balance out overwhelming GOP opposition?
Why does this deconstructionist linguistic and political analysis matter?
It matters because as the language of politics becomes more and more muddled as the parties fight for elusive swing voters, it is important to realize that the meshing of political ideas and practices becomes reflected in rhetoric as much as action.
Ideologies may remain distinct, but politics have a way of making ideology the black sheep of the policy family, ignored until it is needed during an election year to solidify the party base.
Leaders from both parties have always decried the partisanship of their opponents and the political motivations of their actions.
But all around Capitol Hill the feeling of partisanship seems particularly strong in 2004 -- and the rhetoric confirms it.
House Republican Leader Tom DeLay of Texas said Tuesday that the Democrats have no real budget policies to present to voters.
"They have no agenda," said DeLay. "We have yet to see their (budget agenda) because they have no agenda."
Never mind the fact that House Democrats offered three separate budget resolutions for consideration last week, even though they had no chance of being approved by the GOP-controlled House.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has called President Bush's use of his power to appoint federal justices when Congress is out of session -- as provided under the Constitution -- an abuse of the process.
Bush made the appointments following the obstruction of several controversial nominees by Senate Democrats, a move used by other presidents, though arguably not with such disregard for the opposition party.
With 20 nominees now pending before the Senate, the irony of trying to highlight Bush's abuse of the nomination process and his push for highly conservative jurists is lost on Democrats intent on using equally abusive and ideologically driven practices to get their point across.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has denounced the Democrats' move as obstruction that "can't be tolerated."
What Frist and other Republicans fail to admit publicly is the undeniably strong power they wield in the Senate and House that they have used to all but remove Democrats from the legislative process unless it serves the greater GOP agenda to do otherwise.
A prime example was when the GOP banded with Democrats to pass legislation increasing FCC broadcast indecency fines, an issue that feeds into the conservative GOP political base.
Nevertheless, the Republican leadership has repeatedly kept Democrats out of House-Senate negotiations on major pieces of legislation -- such as the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill and Energy Bill last year.
This abuse of power drove Democrats to the partisan extremes the GOP leadership now regularly decries.
The difference is that for Senate and House Democrats, their powerlessness leaves stark partisanship and procedural wrangling one of the only means they have to gain a foothold in the legislative process and maintain some measure of relevance.
I spilled many a word last year lambasting Democrats for not standing up to the GOP, myopically ignoring that it would make for very boring politics, the political equivalent of a constant, "he said, she said" exchange.
Unfortunately, it does not look like things will change for the foreseeable future.
When asked about the issue, many Republicans on Capitol Hill smile and say they are just doing the same thing Democrats did when they controlled two of the three branches of the federal government -- and that Democrats better get used to it.
The problem for you and me is that in the meantime, very little will get done.
Of course, given that bipartisan agreement gave us support for the Iraq invasion, the bloated and ineffective Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, this may, in some sense, be a good thing.
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