JASON: Rush had a way of explaining things that made it easy to understand. And that’s the key to being a good talk show host. He had a way — that way — of making us think. And that’s why we plan to revisit some of those think pieces he always had, those thoughtful little monologues he had, and we’ll call it our Monday Musings segment. Now, bipartisanship has been all the rage, all the buzzword around town, especially when the Democrats are in the majority. So, here’s Rush from 2006 talking about what it really means.

RUSH: These people are running around talking about the “new realism, the new realism.” It’s bureaucrat-speak. It’s nothing but elitist hogwash. Realism, pragmatism, consensus, bipartisanship. It’s all bunk. In the first place, there’s nothing wrong with partisanship. Bipartisanship means somebody had to cave and guess who caved? It was our side that caved on this. But this notion of talking to our enemies. The West and the United Nations, we’ve been talking to Iran for what, now, on their nuclear program, three years? If it’s three years, it’s six. I mean, how long have we been talking to them? And the result is what? They are three years closer to nukes. We’re gonna talk to ’em next month, they’re gonna be a month closer to nukes. We’re gonna talk to ’em another six years, they’re gonna be six years closer to nukes. Oh, yeah. But we can do this in a bipartisan fashion, we can make everybody feel better, and we can make people think that we’re gonna get along with these people ’cause we can go talk to them.

Let me share with you the words of Bill Bennett writing at National Review Online about the Iraq Surrender Group. He says, “I’ve heard again and again at the press conference and on subsequent interviews variants of ‘this is how a commission should work in Washington,’ ‘this has been great bi-partisanship,’ ‘it’s too bad we can’t operate this way more,’ ‘if any message is to be sent it’s the message that five Republicans and five Democrats of goodwill sat down since March and put together a remarkable document.” Those are some of the things being said about this embarrassment and abomination of a report. As Uncle Bob’s brother, Bill says, “This is the triumph of the therapeutic, where bipartisanship — a little hug across the aisle — has become a higher value than justice. The crisis of the house divided has been inverted; we now longer are worried about the crisis, but the House, the moral, the good, and the just take a backseat to collegiality. Does history really give a hoot about bipartisanship? Who cares whether they are getting along?”

Show me the book in the library, Great Bipartisanship in American History. Show me where does it happen? “The task is to do the right thing. Especially in a war. But when relativism is the highest value, agreement becomes the highest goal regardless of right or wrong, and woe to those who disagree. They’ll be sent whence they came, the outer reaches of extremism. This is the tyranny of the best people, today’s equivalent of the Cliveden set. One reporter asked if the president would accept this edict, exhibiting a total lack of understanding of how the Constitution is set up.” Mr. Bennett concludes, “In all my time in Washington, I have never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority, self-congratulatory, full of itself, horrible.”

You know, bipartisanship simply means Republicans cave on their core principals and agree with Democrats. That’s why everybody’s praising the stupid report, ’cause there’s nothing in this about winning, there’s nothing in this about victory, there isn’t anything in this about moving forward in a positive way. This-is-cut-and-run surrender without the words. This is what they’re having orgasms over, folks, this to them — I’m telling you — maybe this is the way you people in Rio Linda will understand this. This report and everything that came to be out of it and how it got put together is better than sex. I telling you, these people are just going nuts over this. Because it harks back to a better time when wise men are — I tell you who they’re talking about. Averell Harriman, Cyrus Vance, Theodore Sorensen, Robert McNamara, all these others were advising brilliant Democrat presidents, the wise men, and you see Bill Bennett is right. This is not even about the policy.

This is about national unity, this is about reaching across the aisle for a few hugs, maybe a little smack here or there, and it’s therapy. These people just engaged in therapy. They basically had a nine-month 12-step program here for how to make themselves feel better during times of crisis resulting from partisanship. It just — it’s frustrating. That’s as far as I should go here within the bounds of language that doesn’t get to the profane.

JASON: You know, Rush is really on to something there. I’ve gone through three campaigns in five years, three federal campaigns, two for the House, one for the Senate, I served in Congress, and, and I can tell you two fundamental facts, that, one, there is no interest in compromising on the part of the Democrats, two, there’s a distinction between compromise and cave. And what happens is the political campaign consulting swamp — and I know I’m offending people, but you’ll just have to forgive me — thinks you can get a hundred percent of the vote. After all, they get judged by wins and losses, not by whether you change the country for the better.

All they care about is if my candidate wins. And if they think you can get a hundred percent of the vote — not kidding — they don’t want you to offend anybody. And the only way not to offend anybody is to not take a stand, to not compromise but to cave.