Even under Reagan, liberals like Tip O' Neill and Ted Kennedy were able to reach common ground– Remember Reagan was NOT president during a GOP majority-yet still worked well with the Democratic Congress. If they were that far left, how would that be possible???

Maybe 1994 was a rejection of the lurch left– but 2006 and 2008 were rejections of the lurch right under Bush/Cheney. The pendulum is swinging back.

… as another “overcompensation” and more, after “eight years in the wilderness” of Bush-Cheney.

Careful. 1994 was a nation-wide public rejection of the great lurch leftward in 1993-4 as well as with details related to the arrogance and conceit as well as misconduct related to health care (and other misdeeds by the White House). For 1994 you can blame the Clinton administration and what it did.

Can they only be blamed? Probably not. It can be “blamed” on Reagan (the object of hatred that is only rivaled by hatred of George W. Bush) after the 1980 elections, when the public said “no” to the liberal orthodoxy. There was resentment from then onward. It erupted into joy and ambition after the Clinton election, but was mistaken as a public shift leftware and overreached by the Dems. (That is remarkably what we're seeing this year with the out-of-touch, increasingly-worse-behaving Dems, too.)

It all changed with the advent of nutty Newtery in 1994. Now HE wrote the book on partisan warfare! Those friendships were necessary to get any kind of interparty consensus. Now none of the younger (relatively speaking, that is!)set bother with finding common ground-they just knife the opposition in the gut.

Meanwhile,

“Teddy and Ronnie got along” [which even more "is old history"]

as did Tip O'Neill and Ronnie Raygun (to address the _true_ derangement other than with Bush).

Someone else said that Teddy in later years (after Chappaquiddick) redeemed himself. Actually, he stooped to additional lows not only with Bork but with the “nuclear freeze” and related destructive behavior that precluded him from being welcomed by Americans into the White House. But, time healed many of the wounds he caused, as he was succeeded in Washington by many others who not only didn't have his celebrity stature but whose actions and results and behavior deserved less respect. (And a few on the Right also are in that category. Kennedy died with more respect than I suspect Newt Gingrich not only has, but ever will have.) Ted Kennedy was better than many other, more contemporary, forces and personalities in Washington, that's for certain.