more reasons not to want or expect bipartisan cooperation

I really hate the idea being kicked around that Presidential candidates should pledge up front to real bipartisan cooperation. And Paul Krugman as usual has an excellent column about why we really shouldn't expect such cooperation.

Democrats and Republicans are just too far apart nowadays, because the GOP is still controlled by the lunatic conservatives. As Krugman notes, the GOP presidential candidates (Mike Huckabee excepted) are backing to the hilt the pro-rich economic policies of the de facto Bush Administration despite the clear evidence that MOST Americans are not happy with how the economy has gone under The Decider (and that was true even before the credit crunch began).

Why? "Because the G.O.P. is still controlled by a conservative movement that does not tolerate deviations from tax-cutting, free-market, greed-is-good orthodoxy." Krugman concludes, "On economics, and on much else, there is no common ground between the parties."

That's true - and that alone would make cooperation difficult as long as the GOP is in its current ideological mode. Add in their political tactics of (in majority) screwing the minority and using every political and parliamentary tactic possible to pass their agenda by the narrowest majority possible (i.e., the most extreme stuff they can get a majority for), and (in minority) of obstructing anything the Democrats try to do, and again I have to ask - WHY BOTHER?