During her accession-to-the-throne speech yesterday, The Queen Scudderite declared the end to partisanship. There will now be “partnership, not partisanship.”

As we have learned when Scudderites use the words partnership or their old favorite, bi-partisanship, what they mean is “Republicans (and all others) going along with Democrats.” This is the same thing they meant when, just a few years ago, they called upon Republicans in Congress to “share the power.”

Democrats “share” power the way I used to share soda with a couple of my siblings. I’d say, “Want to split a soda?” He or she would say yes, then I'd drink the whole thing. When they complained, I would explain: “Well, you see, my half of the soda was the bottom half. So I had to drink your half to get to mine.”

Democrats really expect us to believe that line of bovine scathology.

And there will be partnership; there will be sharing of power. You can count on it. It will be the sort of willing partnership that the mob gets when they come into your business, armed, and offer you a deal. (The sort of deal you can’t refuse, the sort of deal in which refusal is a mere formality—like when a rape victim screams, “No!” at the top of her lungs.)

Look. I don’t mind that the Scudderites are in charge: they won the elections. To the victor goes the spoils, which means they run the gin joint—at least until the next cycle of elections. I understand what victory is. Unlike Democrats, I can live with its consequences. I care only about the fact that while Democrats like to have power, they don't like to fight. Hence the talk about partnership and other forms of rhetorical excrement.

I just wish they’d knock off the garbage about how politics under the new regime isn’t going to be politics the way it has always been played. (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- as far as how politics is done.)

Oh. About the “Scudderite” business. It is not a reference to the fictional Nehemia Scudder (used by David Brin to refer to those who apparently wish to institute a theocracy in the United States) but to the fictional Bertram Scudder in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, who gives this little sermonette in Chapter VI:

“When the masses are destitute and yet there are goods available it’s idiotic to expect people to be stopped by some scrap of paper called a property deed. Property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it.”

The emphasis in that last sentence is mine. We know, deep down, that Democrats and, more importantly, their base feel precisely that way.