Could it be that bipartisanship is busting out on Capitol Hill? Well...

 

It would stand to reason that a group that has consistently posted dismal approval ratings (currently at 15 percent) for years would eventually be shamed into doing the job they were elected to do.

Maybe, maybe, Congress has finally reached that point.

With a wink and a nod the capital press corps is writing about the sudden breakout of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill. Just as we were all ready to give up on a group of lawmakers embedded in hyper-partisanship and gridlock, we received a ray of hope.

Sens. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia moderate Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a solid conservative Republican from Pennsylvania -- both of whom have "A" ratings from the NRA -- have teamed up to salvage a little piece of gun safety in the wake of Sandy Hook.

Sens. Mark Rubio, a conservative Florida Republican, and Chuck Schumer, an old-fashioned liberal from New York, are among the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that appears ready to finally forge a path toward comprehensive immigration reform.

President Obama’s budget offers respectable headway toward entitlement reforms and a lower level of discretionary spending that, compared to GDP, falls below the expenditures of both Bushes, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan in that far-flung category of federal programs.

In response, the lefty liberals are squealing about Obama’s plans to limit Social Security payments through the “chained CPI” method and his effort to keep Medicare costs in check. (Anyone who still considers this president a socialist or a radical is a fool.)

And on North Korea’s reckless threats to shoot off a few nukes, Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem to be rallying around the Obama administration’s hardline stance, promising a massive military response.

As someone who has pleaded for years for our lawmakers to take a more pragmatic, practical, mainstream stance on various issues, I am amazed at this sudden show of centrist bipartisanship. Perhaps we have inched our way back from the abyss.

But, well, maybe not. Some pundits have pointed out that getting a Democrat and a Republican in the Senate to agree on such a basic fix as closing the gun show loophole is nothing worthy of celebration. In addition, the fact that the president’s recent dinners with groups of Republican lawmakers is news at all shows the overall pathetic atmosphere in Washington.

And then we have this: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled privately that he has no interest in sitting in the same room as his Democratic counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid, to discuss a possible “grand bargain” on budget and tax issues, according to Politico.

Mike Allen of Politico, who broke this story a few hours ago, drew this conclusion:

“McConnell is fine with talking to Obama -- just talking at this point -- but he doesn’t want Reid there when it happens.

“Such is life in Congress, where hope of bipartisanship is giving way to the same old toxic relationships.”