What he fails to mention is that under President Bill Clinton, the GOP, often in significant numbers, voted for a slew of big policy reforms: 16 Senate Republicans voted for the Family and Medical Leave Act; a telecommunications reform passed 81-18; the welfare-reform compromise passed 78-21; the Brady Act gun-control bill only passed because of Republican support; the North American Free Trade Agreement passed 73-26; Biden’s crime bill passed 95-4. In those days, parties would bend over backward to compromise. This was often the case during the George W. Bush years, as well. The Patriot Act was a bipartisan bill. No Child Left Behind, co-written by liberal “lion” Sen. Ted Kennedy, passed 87-10. It was the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 that frayed the political order in ways from which we haven’t recovered. For the first time in contemporary history, a political party unilaterally crammed through a national reform without any buy-in from half the nation.