Partisan tactic: Break government, divide society, oppose everything, blame the opposition

Media Bias Fact Check rating of Washington Monthly

The cynicism and bad faith alleged in this article are jaw dropping. The Washington Monthly writes in an article entitled, How the GOP Engineers Crises to Blame on Biden:

Republicans say Biden has failed to end the pandemic and restore normalcy to our politics—but they are the ones spreading the lies and disinformation to undermine the vaccine and keep America divided.

On a recent episode of the Hacks on Tap podcast, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report discussed President Joe Biden’s falling poll numbers. She pointed to predictable factors like the emergence of the Delta variant of the coronavirus—slowing down our return from the pandemic—and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. But she also argued that many Americans were disappointed by the continuing vitriol of the political discourse and the intense partisan divide. They blamed Biden, she said, for not restoring a sense of “normalcy” to politics.

The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the world, but he cannot single-handedly fix our politics.

To a certain extent, Biden perpetuated the idea that he could return calm to our politics: “American people are looking for a candidate who will promise them peace, not just victory.” He campaigned on the idea that Donald Trump’s presidency was “an aberrant moment in time,” arguing, “We have to remember who we are.” He promised that he would work with politicians on both sides of the aisle to pass legislation—and he has fulfilled that promise. Indeed, he has passed more bipartisan legislation than many of his supporters anticipated, such as the American Rescue Act and the infrastructure package.

Of course, politicians always make bold promises during campaigns. But perhaps Biden oversold his ability to restore decency to our nation’s politics. When he launched his presidential bid in May 2019, he acknowledged that the American people were “sick of the division. They’re sick of the fighting. They’re sick of the childish behavior.” In other words, his presidency would be the solution.

But it’s one thing to work with the few moderate Republicans who are left, and it is another to change the behavior of the party’s rank and file—especially when the GOP, as a whole, is still led by a would-be autocrat, and their whole modus operandi is to manufacture problems they can blame on Biden.

Simply put, the Republican Party has embraced a three-part platform: undermine the Biden administration; perpetuate anger and division; and blame Biden for not fixing the very crises they have engineered. This strategy isn’t a secret. In May 2021, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was “100 percent” focused on “stopping” the Biden administration—not ending the pandemic, battling climate change, or rescuing the economy from the devastation of COVID-19. His stated goal is pure obstruction.

Despite McConnell saying the quiet part out loud, large portions of the American population have accepted the premise that Biden is responsible for the vitriolic climate—even though it’s a climate cultivated in part by the conservative charlatans at Fox News who spread lies and misinformation every night to their millions of viewers.  

And we should also recognize the reality that the Republican Party has made a concerted effort to engineer crises that they, in turn, blame on Biden. It’s a cynical scheme—and voters need to pick up on it before it’s too late.

The article correctly points out that (i) Biden can’t make people like each other, (ii) he can’t control the divisive rhetoric and lies from Fox News, OANN, or Newsmax, and (iii) he can’t prevent republican politicians from spreading crackpot conspiracy theories or publishing animated videos depicting political violence against evil Democrats. He absolutely cannot control how social media spreads falsehoods and divisive content intentionally designed to create an irrational distrustful, angry national us vs. them bunker mentality.

Questions: 

1. Does the article get American political reality about right, or are allegations of cynical bad faith by the Republican leadership and their break it first and blame the opposition second tactics either false, or just over the top partisan exaggerations?

2. Does Biden deserve blame for promising bipartisanship when it was not possible to deliver, and he arguably should have know that was the case? Was Biden a fool to think that Trump’s presidency was “an aberrant moment in time,” or can that still turn out to be true?