The Problem With Discrediting the Process

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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March 19, 2010

The Problem With Discrediting the Process

When debating the merits of the health care legislation didn't work, Republicans changed tack and attacked the legislative process itself. By focusing on the backroom dealmaking to the budget reconciliation process to self-executing rules, Republicans hope Americans will not trust anything that emerges from that process.

Ezra Klein: "The result of this constant assault on how a bill becomes a law -- a process that has never before been subject to such 24/7 scrutiny from cable news and blogs and talk radio -- will be ever more public cynicism.... Republicans, who're likely to return to power with a majority that's well below 60 seats in the Senate and a 40-vote margin in the House, will soon find themselves on the wrong end of that calculus."

It's almost a sure thing that Democrats will launch the very same attacks once they're back in the minority.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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March 19, 2010