COKIE ROBERTS TELLS THE ZOMBIE LIE AGAIN

Here's Cokie Roberts near the end of her NPR segment this morning, discussing the not-nearly-as-fascinating-as-the-Beltway-believes question "Why couldn't Barack Obama make everyone in D.C. bipartisan and cooperative and nice?"

... the fact is, George Bush ran on bringing harmony to Washington, and thought he could work across the aisle as he had in Texas, but the 2000 election left everybody with -- so angry that he was unable to do that.

Right -- Bush, Rove, Cheney, Ashcroft, et al. were unable to work with Democrats in a spirit of bipartisanship, despite fervently hoping that they could. A thoroughly far-right agenda (on tax cuts, Christianization of the government, judicial nominees and eventually war, torture, surveillance and the role of the executive branch) came only after they came to the painful realization that their repeated requests that Democrats join them in a chorus of "Kumbaya" were being rebuffed.

What -- surely you didn't think she was going to find that Republicans deserve more of the blame for this than Democrats, did you? According to Beltway logic, she had two choices -- blame Democrats or blame everybody. She chose the latter, which makes her a "centrist."