I wonder how long President Biden will hold out the olive branch to the GOP? He has been around for a long time so he knows the history of trying to get them to the “compromise” table.

I like the comparison of this exercise to the Peanuts cartoon strip of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, she always pulls it away just as he is going to kick.

How long will he keep playing Charlie Brown? I will admit that I think the Democrats are for the most part a pretty naive bunch, or maybe they are just uncontrollable dreamers.

• Too many Democrats imagine the day when the GOP actually cares about bipartisanship again.
• Too many Democrats dream of the day when the Republicans put what’s good for the country above party politics.
• Too many Democrats see a day when unity is the reality of the American landscape.

Until we see some serious signs that the GOP really wants to play nice in the political school yard, the Democrats need to get over these pie-in-the-sky thoughts. Yes, they should hold out an olive branch once in a while, but they don’t need to leave it there while their arm gets chopped off!

Democrats need to learn from the past. In 1994 while Democrats had control of both the executive and legislative branches they let the Republicans stifle almost all legislative activity with the eventual promise of unity. They did the same thing for the Obama administration in 2008. The Republicans played games and the Democrats naively went along with them.

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The Biden administration needs to understand that the same thing will happen if they let it.

Decent Law Abiding Americans Don’t need unity with:

• People who don’t have a grasp on reality
  There are those who cling to one conspiracy theory or another, be it Q-Anon or any of a number of other totally absurd beliefs.
• Domestic terrorists
  Proud Boys and all the other groups like them need to be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law, they don’t need to be coddled. We don’t need to take our country down to the lowest common denominator to incorporate their insane ideology.
• Avowed racists
  Racism has been an integral part of our country since its founding. About a hundred years ago many of the States were ruled by the KKK including the state I live in. I have read much of that history. We don’t need to allow that to happen again just to obtain some semblance of unity.

We don’t need unity to function, especially with any of the groups above. The Republicans have allowed their party to be kidnapped by the fringes, and they obviously can’t figure out a way to get it back to the party of Lincoln.