Please share it everywhere!! By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot – Commentary
AI defines “Bipartisanship” as – “A political situation in a two-party system where opposing parties find common ground through compromise and cooperation to pass legislation or form public policy.”
Ironically, perhaps sadly AI itself is now the focus of decidedly partisan politics. The left side of the political aisle seems to want it heavily regulated and controlled by the government. The right side of the aisle wants minimal government interference in the development process of AI. The left wants data centers funded by utility rate payers but the right sees that as an abuse of taxpayer’s dollars. The political left wants to share the R&D involved in building and refining said technology with America’s geo-political and technological advisory, China while the political right remains staunchly opposed to such a notion.
The left seems set on referring to it as Artificial Intelligence while the right seems to like the renaming of it to Super Intelligence.
Put another way, the future of technology and for that matter the future of mankind’s everyday lives has no common political ground.
If we can’t even find common ground regarding how to manage the process of building a new form of technology that will permeate our future in ways we can’t even now imagine…is there any real hope for a political future where bipartisanship can exist? Personally, I am not optimistic in that regard. Like the horse and buggy, gas street lights, TV’s that only picked up 3 or 4 channels, not wearing pajamas when one went out in public and knowing the difference between males and females…bipartisanship may well be on its way to becoming a whisper of a bygone era.
Before “bipartisanship” became a political buzz-word, finding common ground was just common sense. Sure, democrats and republicans had differing ideas on how to get things done, but both sides of the political aisle saw the goal of any policy or legislation as something that would be good for the country, or the people. One side wanted higher taxes, the other lower taxes. One side wanted less government interference, the other wanted more government control. The common sense common ground was to find a way to get done what needed doing at a lower cost so as to be more accountable to the American taxpayers, and do whatever it was in a way that might increase regulations somewhat while not over-burdening the process with mountains of laws that would intrude needlessly on people’s lives.
That lofty ideal has collapsed as neither side of the political spectrum seems to have the common sense to seek common ground in today’s political climate. Perhaps a brief history lesson is in order to truly understand the political divide.
Politically, the U.S. has always been primarily a 2 party system. Let’s start with the Federalist Party under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams which held as key tenants a strong central government, a loose interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, support for commerce, manufacturing, and national banking, and closer ties with Great Britain. On the other side of the aisle we had the Democratic-Republican party which held the core values of States’ rights and a decentralized government, a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, support for an agrarian (farming) economy, and closer ties with France.
The modern Democratic Party replaced the Democratic-Republican Party in 1828 while the Federalist Party more or less morphed into the National Republican Party at roughly the same time. The Whig Party grew out of the National Republican Party in 1834. Basically, the Democrats favored states’ rights, a limited federal government, and agrarian interests, the Whigs supported Henry Clay’s American System, which championed a national bank, high protective tariffs, and federal funding for roads and canals.
Obviously, higher tariffs are nothing new.
The Whig Party collapsed in 1854 with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which set the stage for the political divide over slavery. The Whigs in the south aligned with the Democrat Party favoring slavery while the northern Whigs forming the modern Republican Party in opposition of slavery.
That partisan rift led to the Civil War and it would be nearly a century before the 2 Parties started what would become a rather short-lived sense of bipartisanship under Eisenhower and then JFK. It lasted roughly 40 years, at least in the halls of congress with the 2 Parties willing to look for common ground on major policy issues. It started going the other way in the 1990’s under the Clinton administration.
In my opinion, the beginning of the end of bipartisanship amongst elected officials, and voters themselves started with “Hillarycare,” a decidedly socialist approach to healthcare, and while that attempt failed, it set the stage for what was to come. The Congressional Progressive Caucus formed in 1991, but democrats still embraced the label of “liberals.” At that point, Republicans were still Republicans. In the early 2000’s, the Democratic Party shifted further to the left and took on the label of “progressive.” The Republicans remained…Republican.
What that meant was that the center line between the two political ideologies moved further to the left each time the left side of the aisle slid a bit further to the left. It went much further to the left when Barak Hussein Obama was elected because while he and his party continued to refer to themselves as “progressives,” the reality was that the ideology shifted to socialism.
It really wasn’t until the Republican Party decided to counter Obama’s socialism by forming the Tea Party movement in 2009 that those on the right side of the aisle, the voters at that point more-so than elected officials, that Republicans moved their ideology a bit further to the right and as the Democrat Party started embracing the socialist ideology between 2010 to 2024, the Republican Party shed the Tea Party moniker to become more and more “populist.”
With each shift of both Parties, the idea of bipartisanship grew dimmer and dimmer ultimately resulting in where we are as a country today with Populist Republicans clashing with Democratic Socialists who no longer try to mask their socialist-Marxist ambitions and proudly proclaim their true nature.
While I am no fan of the “Christian Conservative” wing of the Republican Party, in that if one really doesn’t want the government messing with religion one should keep their religion out of the government, I do not believe that the main obstacle to bipartisanship is found on the right side of the political aisle. I believe it’s the left side of that aisle that primarily needs to moderate itself, as what has become the Marxist socialist left is disproportionately out of control.
I could point to a wide number of issues to make the point including how the left used to proclaim themselves as THE protectors of women, but now claim to not even be able to define what a woman is, or how the left used to claim to be THE party of free speech, but now revel in the need to censor not only expression, but also thought. It was JFK who drove American exceptionalism by challenging America to put a man on the moon and return safely to Earth by the end of the decade, and now, what used to be his party denounces and apologizes for American exceptionalism. The list goes on and on, but I believe there is one example above all others that truly shows just how far the left has drifted from common sense, and it starts at our borders.
Here is Senator Chuck Schumer in 1996…30 years ago…speaking out against illegal immigration and in favor of using Social Security cards as a form of valid ID to eliminate fraud..
More recently, in 2009, Schumer again spoke on the floor of the Senate against illegal immigration contrasted with the radical shift to socialism he, and his Party took just 8 years later, in 2017.
Was Schumer the only one from the left side of the aisle to take a stand against illegal immigration AND birthright citizenship before the socialist shift? Nope. Here’s Harry Reid in 1993.
Here is the same Harry Reid railing against border security shortly before retiring in early 2017.
It is important to note that the examples provided here are not right wing rhetoric, it is the left…in their own words showcasing the shift.
When the left side of the aisle deems concerned parents speaking at school board meetings as domestic terrorists while championing the barbaric Islamic terrorists who murdered innocent men, women and children in Israel…when the left makes heroes out of common street thugs while demonizing and defunding law enforcement…when the left used the FBI to collect data on 639,000 Republican affiliated American citizens and tracked individuals who simply purchased a red MAGA hat, use the IRS as a political targeting weapon, force Americans to buy government-mandated healthcare while penalizing those who don’t, force citizens to take experimental vaccines and penalize those who don’t, gin up phony impeachments not once but twice, use the media they control as a propaganda tool, publically advocate for the brainwashing of our nation’s youth in order to steer them towards their socialist ideology and turn our education system into an indoctrination system to prevent students from being taught HOW to think and instead tell them WHAT to think…one thing becomes pretty clear – the real barrier to any future effort at bipartisanship isn’t found on the RIGHT side of the political aisle.
To be clear, it isn’t just the socialist ideology which has become so loud on the left that prevents future bipartisanship, it is also being heavily driven by the left’s insistence on “identity politics.” Rather than seeing our nation as what it has always been intended to be – a melting pot – the left insists that it be carved up into a multitude of individualized factions where each and every faction should be rewarded with its own set of rules which must be accepted and revered by any who disagree. The obvious example is racial, but there are many and virtually none of them involve common sense.
If one doesn’t agree with the left’s “identity politics,” one is labeled as “phobic,” or racist, a Nazi or a fascist. Wear a red cap, fly an American flag, say men don’t belong in women’s locker rooms…you’re deplatformed from social media, attacked, denied entry to an event, escorted off a plane and in some cases you could lose your job…or your life. The left of the aisle that claims to be tolerant demands that the right tolerate their intolerance of all who simply disagree with them. That’s not a foundation upon with to build bipartisanship.
To be fair, some on the right aren’t much better. Trust science or question biblical texts and they’ll call you a heretic. Belong to a brand of religion different from theirs and they’ll condemn you. Politically, while some on the right chastise others on their side of the aisle for what they claim to be the other’s allegiance to “one man or one Party,” they will also chastise members of High Court for NOT having allegiance to the “one man or party” by, or from which their appointment to the Court was made. Either politically, religiously or socially challenge emotionally based opinions of some on the right by presenting simple and easily found documented facts and just like some on the left, they resort to baseless and false allegations as a response.
Seeking bipartisanship for a better political future is indeed a lofty goal, and necessary too for many, many reasons but historically, with a few brief interruptions, the partisan divide has only grown wider, and now, with both Parties becoming more internally divided I believe it will take something catastrophic before common sense bridges the chasm.
Then again, 9/11 only closed the political distance for a couple of weeks.
Copyright © 2026 Craig Andresen / thenationalpatriot.com all rights reserved
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For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Diane Sori’s latest Op-Ed at The Patriot Factor, Bipartisanship and Compromise…Measuring Success and Failure
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RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS…LIVE!
Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6th from 7 to 8:30pm EST, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori discuss ‘Bipartisanship and Compromise…Measuring Success and Failure ‘’; “Bipartisanship – A Whisper of a Bygone Era”and important news of the day. Tune in to RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on https://rspradio1.com Click ‘LISTEN LIVE.’
