[munificent]

This is the iterated prisoner's dilemma of modern US politics.

If you compromise and cooperate with the other party, some fraction of time you will make progress, and some fraction of time you'll get screwed because they're cooperation was a bad-faith trap.

It's certainly the case that at least since New Gingrich the odds of the former have grown much higher when Democratic politicians try to work with Republicans.

[rootusrootus]

> Newt Gingrich

I think history will look back and see that Newt Gingrich shares a disproportionately large share of the blame for the tribal politics we are experiencing now. He wasn't first, but he was effective.

[dragonwriter]

> I think history will look back and see that Newt Gingrich shares a disproportionately large share of the blame for the tribal politics we are experiencing now.

Much as I loath Gingrich, I think that the blame for transformation of political culture that he has gotten really from day one of his speakership is overblown, and that the two main factors are:

(1) the reversion to the normal alignment of partisan and ideological divides as the long era of the overlapping realignments of the post-Depression era (New Deal and Civil Rights) and,

(2) Clinton’s political triangulation strategy reducing opportunity for partisan differentiation on a wide range of high-saliency policy issues, driving a focus on personal and culture war issues as well as a rightward policy shift to re-enable differentiation on those issues (which itself required relying on personal and cultural identity politics heavily.)

Gingrich, was a problem, to be sure, but there is always a Gingrich around (many of them), but he became successful when he did because both structural forces and choices by the other party created an environment in which his approach would be rewarded.