From MSNBC's weekend morning show with Alex Witt and her "boys" Pat Buchanan and Peter Fenn, while discussing the retirements of Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan, Pat Buchanan is asked if the Dems losing their 60 seat majority in the Senate means that business on Capitol Hill comes grinding to a halt, to which Buchanan gleefully replies "Hopefully".

Peter Fenn begs to differ and thinks that the Democrats are going to "call the Republicans bluff" and things will return to normal business in the Senate. I think Fenn is kidding himself. The Republicans do not care about governing if they think it scores them political points. We can't get much in the way of decent legislation passed with the Conserva-Dems we've got now in the Senate. Replacing them with Republicans isn't going to make that any better.

And I don't see the Democrats calling anyone's "bluff". If they were going to do that they'd have done it already. The Republicans were good at ramming through every piece of crappy legislation they wanted to get passed with Bush with less than a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, but we never heard any talk of the government "grinding to a halt" from the Senate obstructing when they were in charge. The Democrats have too many awful members who may as well be Republicans within their own caucus to do the same thing.

h/t to GottaLaff at The Political Carnival with her "Shallow Thought" for the day on MSNBC giving air time to the likes of Buchanan in the first place for catching this one. And I agree with this completely:

Punditiots who advocate government failure should be given less, if any, air time, not more. Vigorous debate is a good thing, and freedom of speech should continue to be alive and well.

But to warmly welcome noxious obstructionists like Buchanan to the airwaves does not serve what's left of the news media well, because he does not inform, he infects. And that is destructive to a healthy democracy.

I hear ya' Laffy but they're not about democracy or any type of honest debate in this country. They're all about the ratings. I do hope Peter Fenn is right in this regard. If the Republicans over play their hand with their obstruction, maybe it finally becomes politically untenable for them to continue to do so, but I'm not holding my breath.