Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, always charming in his social media posts from his farm, from the Iowa State Fair, and other impossibly typical Midwestern scenes, recently posted that Iowans keep asking him why Republicans and Democrats don’t work together.
Grassley’s response was about how he was just named the most bipartisan Republican senator and one of the top five bridge-building U.S. senators. Well, good.
Now, don’t get me wrong — I adore Sen. Grassley. He’s a walking argument against both term limits and age limits in the Senate, and other than protecting ethanol subsidies for Iowa farmers, has a pretty consistent conservative voting record. But allow me to add a more accurate and more pointed response to the question Grassley says he keeps getting asked.
The reason Republicans and Democrats don’t work together to solve problems, as they are supposed to, is that their voters won’t let them.
Yes, really.
In today’s politics, even a photo of a Republican talking to a Democrat causes a social media flood of condemnations and threats of a primary challenge. Much less trying to negotiate an actual solution to a problem.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford is still smarting from his experience in 2024. Lankford was tasked by Republican leadership to craft a compromise with Democrats to address the border crisis and to legislate tougher new immigration and asylum laws. But a backlash led to his being abandoned and hung out to dry by his colleagues. Similarly, while currently flourishing as Secretary of State in the Trump administration, Marco Rubio will never be forgiven by some Republicans for his efforts from 2013 to 2017 to craft a bipartisan immigration solution.
Who wins elections? Candidates who promise to “fight,” not who pledge to work across the aisle. Dare you attempt to work with the other party on entitlement reform, immigration, spending restraint, or any other of our pressing problems, and you will be immediately demonized by grassroots voters (primary voters) as a traitor, and you’ll be primaried by someone who promises to never even breathe the same disgusting air that the other party breathes.
Here’s the problem: That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
The American experiment tests whether people who see the world differently can find ways to live together in peace without needing an external authority to rule over them. Doing so means finding consensus, and that’s what is meant by “self-government.” The alternative to self-government is either submission to a ruler, or endless conflict.
Consensus is determined through negotiation and compromise. That’s how you get people who disagree to come to terms. If consensus is achieved, the fruit of that work becomes embodied in legislation. That’s how all of this is supposed to work.
Why can’t Republicans and Democrats work together to solve problems? If you want your representatives to fight for you and destroy those who disagree with you, I’m sorry, but consider the possibility that you’re the problem.