Is Divided Government the New Normal?

Liberals and the media (but I repeat. . .) have decried “gridlock” in Washington for decades now, thus betraying their constitutional illiteracy. I have half-joked many times before that gridlock is the next best thing to constitutional government—a corollary to my axiom that while our Constitution may not be perfect, it is certainly better than the government we have!

Notice, then, that with the results of the 2018 midterm, the last four presidents have all seen their party lose control of the House, and three of the four also saw their party lose the Senate, too. Trump can still lose the Senate, though he will need to be re-elected for this to happen. (By the way, this is looking too far ahead, but if Trump is re-elected and Dems take the Senate and then Ruth Buzzie Ginsburg leaves the Supreme Court, Trump should name Merrick Garland, just to watch the Democrats complain they’ve been tricked, because by that time Garland will be so old that he wouldn’t be on the Court very long. . . But I digress.)

Given that a goal of Progressivism for a century now has been to abolish the separation of powers through the administrative state, one has to wonder whether divided government is what voters have come up with as a substitute. There have only been 12 years out of the last 50 that we’ve had unified party control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Maybe it is time for someone to straight up propose forming a new Gridlock Party. I could drink to that.

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