There has been a lot of talk lately about bipartisanship, particularly with respect to the healthcare bill. Paul Krugman in the New York Times recently described how bipartisanship is impossible because moderate Republicans have been driven out of the Republican party. I'd like to take the analysis a step further.
When we talk about the political spectrum, we usually talk about it as though it is a line with a left and a right, like this:
But that's inadequate to describe a lot of the political dynamics that are playing out. There's another axis perpendicular to the first that's become very important recently, which I have been referring to in conversations as the cause-effect axis:
Bipartisanship at the federal level is impossible in any meaningful way right now because there are almost no elected Republicans in the upper right quadrant.
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