(05-15-2016, 12:31 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Bob, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but in the 1930s congress was just as divided. FDR himself was called everything under the sun. That is a feature of our particular system, not a bug, so getting around it isn't that much of a problem.
Sure, my own grandfather referred to FDR as "that man". But the numbers tell a different story. In 1930 the GOP held the presidency and 60% of both houses. In 1937 Democrats held the presidency and EIGHTY percent of both house. Democrats could pass anything they wanted with a two-thirds majority of Democrats. Republicans were a non-issue and could be ignored. The faction they had to pay attention to was the South. Southern Democrats were strongly in favor of New Deal social welfare programs because Northerners paid for it while the benefits went disproportionately to the South, which was desperately poor at the time. The only stumbling block for them was racial politics. As long as FDR did not interfere with Jim Crow and designed his programs to exclude blacks, they were on board.
FDR's stumbling block was the Republican Supreme Court. But in the end they capitulated just like today's Republican Court capitulated on Obamacare and gay marriage.